|
|
|
ANITA MAGSAYSAY-HO
(May 25, 1914 - May 5, 2012)
A seminal Philippine modernist who created art for over eight decades, Anita Magsaysay-Ho is best known for her paintings of women engaged in daily tasks. Magsaysay-Ho’s characteristic subjects, groups of women who feed chickens, cook, sew, and sell fruit in marketplaces, were rendered with affection and respect. Her sensibility, which praised the traditional role of women in Philippine culture while also embodying an early feminist perspective, was shaped by both her exposure, through travel, to international modern culture. Magsaysay-Ho’s ever evolving artistic style reflected a familiarity with the principles of Cubism infused with the artist’s personal sense of rhythm and repetition. Magsaysay-Ho was also a deeply religious person who painted with the idea of locating the spirituality of daily rituals.
Anita Magsaysay was born in Manila in May, 1914, the daughter of Ambrosio Magsaysay, an engineer, and Armilla Corpus. She came from a notable and prosperous family, a branch of the hard-working clan of Don Luis Yangco, known as the “King of Manila Bay and Pasig” from the fleet of boats and barges he operated. Anita’s first cousin, Ramon Magsaysay, served as President of the Philippines from December of 1953 until his tragic death in a 1957 plane crash.
While growing up in the Zambales province, young Anita spent her summer vacations in the countryside where the rituals of rural life made indelible impressions. She observed country life while fishing with her mother and brother and picked mangoes. Anita also took part in tasks including mending fishing nets and pounding rice. A keen observer, even at a young age, the visual memories of these summers in the countryside formed an indelible set of images that later became the subjects of her canvases. she stated,
“I just love to paint women. I feel I know them. I can paint them over and over again. To paint men, I would have to have models; women I draw from memory.”
Anita Magsaysay’s formal education began early, at the age of 13. A precocious student who attended class with a nanny in tow, she took courses from a cadre of notable masters including Fabian de la Rosa, Vicente Rivera y Mir and Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo. Over time, she was also tutored by the artist and cartoonist Ireneo Miranda and the artist and designer Victorio Edades. During the mid-1930s, she studied in the United States at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, where the influence of the school’s director, Zoltan Sepeshy (1898-1974) made a profound impact. While working as a muralist for the progressive WPA (Worker’s Project Association) in the late 1930s and early 1940s), Sepeshy’s art had come to emphasize imagery of civic unity and of workers whose actions were in concert.
While later taking courses at the Art Student’s League in New York City Anita met her future husband, Robert Ho. They married in 1947 and moved frequently in the years that followed as Robert—whose business partner was Anita’s father Ambrosio—built a major shipping business that took the couple and their growing family to Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. During the busy, formative period, Anita kept a studio and continued to paint whenever time allowed. When she visited the Philippines and exhibited, her work was highly regarded. In the 1950s, artist Victor Edades included her as the sole woman on his influential list of “Thirteen Moderns.” She began exhibiting at the influential Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) founded by Led Arguilla, and was grouped with an emerging style called “Neo-Realism.”
As Magsaysay-Ho’s career progressed, the rigor of her early Cubism gave way to a more relaxed style with softer lines and greater separation between the figures. During the 1970s she and her husband became Canadian citizens, spending more time away from the Philippines. Despite this distance, she continued to paint Philippine subjects, often imbued with a strong sense of nostalgia. She also experimented with Chinese calligraphy and the use of ink blots that generated semi-abstract natural forms. Her paintings of the 1980s—her green period—features imagery of fruit and vegetables co-mingled with stylized female figures.
In 2000, the artist published Anita Magsaysay-Ho: An Artist’s Memoirs, a 167-page book that included imagery of her work in color and sepia. This book was followed by Alberto Roces' 2005 Anita Magsaysay-Ho: In Praise of Women. In his text, Roces offers a poignant vision of the benevolent world that Magsaysay-Ho had summoned in her paintings:
They (the women) share their work without a sense of rivalry or a sour note. No villains complicate the scene, no demons move in the shadows to signal trouble and pain. Somehow we sense that the cackling chickens will be caught, the haggling between vendor and buyer will be amicably resolved and the gossip will produce amused giggles, not malicious trouble; all these happenings on canvas are, after all a cementing of the sisterhood.
After suffering a stroke in 2009, Magsaysay-Ho stopped painting. She died in Manila in May of 2012 three weeks before her 98th birthday. Because she died a Canadian citizen, a posthumous resolution to confer the title of “National Artist” on her did not pass. Her legacy continues.
(May 25, 1914 - May 5, 2012)
A seminal Philippine modernist who created art for over eight decades, Anita Magsaysay-Ho is best known for her paintings of women engaged in daily tasks. Magsaysay-Ho’s characteristic subjects, groups of women who feed chickens, cook, sew, and sell fruit in marketplaces, were rendered with affection and respect. Her sensibility, which praised the traditional role of women in Philippine culture while also embodying an early feminist perspective, was shaped by both her exposure, through travel, to international modern culture. Magsaysay-Ho’s ever evolving artistic style reflected a familiarity with the principles of Cubism infused with the artist’s personal sense of rhythm and repetition. Magsaysay-Ho was also a deeply religious person who painted with the idea of locating the spirituality of daily rituals.
Anita Magsaysay was born in Manila in May, 1914, the daughter of Ambrosio Magsaysay, an engineer, and Armilla Corpus. She came from a notable and prosperous family, a branch of the hard-working clan of Don Luis Yangco, known as the “King of Manila Bay and Pasig” from the fleet of boats and barges he operated. Anita’s first cousin, Ramon Magsaysay, served as President of the Philippines from December of 1953 until his tragic death in a 1957 plane crash.
While growing up in the Zambales province, young Anita spent her summer vacations in the countryside where the rituals of rural life made indelible impressions. She observed country life while fishing with her mother and brother and picked mangoes. Anita also took part in tasks including mending fishing nets and pounding rice. A keen observer, even at a young age, the visual memories of these summers in the countryside formed an indelible set of images that later became the subjects of her canvases. she stated,
“I just love to paint women. I feel I know them. I can paint them over and over again. To paint men, I would have to have models; women I draw from memory.”
Anita Magsaysay’s formal education began early, at the age of 13. A precocious student who attended class with a nanny in tow, she took courses from a cadre of notable masters including Fabian de la Rosa, Vicente Rivera y Mir and Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo. Over time, she was also tutored by the artist and cartoonist Ireneo Miranda and the artist and designer Victorio Edades. During the mid-1930s, she studied in the United States at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, where the influence of the school’s director, Zoltan Sepeshy (1898-1974) made a profound impact. While working as a muralist for the progressive WPA (Worker’s Project Association) in the late 1930s and early 1940s), Sepeshy’s art had come to emphasize imagery of civic unity and of workers whose actions were in concert.
While later taking courses at the Art Student’s League in New York City Anita met her future husband, Robert Ho. They married in 1947 and moved frequently in the years that followed as Robert—whose business partner was Anita’s father Ambrosio—built a major shipping business that took the couple and their growing family to Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. During the busy, formative period, Anita kept a studio and continued to paint whenever time allowed. When she visited the Philippines and exhibited, her work was highly regarded. In the 1950s, artist Victor Edades included her as the sole woman on his influential list of “Thirteen Moderns.” She began exhibiting at the influential Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) founded by Led Arguilla, and was grouped with an emerging style called “Neo-Realism.”
As Magsaysay-Ho’s career progressed, the rigor of her early Cubism gave way to a more relaxed style with softer lines and greater separation between the figures. During the 1970s she and her husband became Canadian citizens, spending more time away from the Philippines. Despite this distance, she continued to paint Philippine subjects, often imbued with a strong sense of nostalgia. She also experimented with Chinese calligraphy and the use of ink blots that generated semi-abstract natural forms. Her paintings of the 1980s—her green period—features imagery of fruit and vegetables co-mingled with stylized female figures.
In 2000, the artist published Anita Magsaysay-Ho: An Artist’s Memoirs, a 167-page book that included imagery of her work in color and sepia. This book was followed by Alberto Roces' 2005 Anita Magsaysay-Ho: In Praise of Women. In his text, Roces offers a poignant vision of the benevolent world that Magsaysay-Ho had summoned in her paintings:
They (the women) share their work without a sense of rivalry or a sour note. No villains complicate the scene, no demons move in the shadows to signal trouble and pain. Somehow we sense that the cackling chickens will be caught, the haggling between vendor and buyer will be amicably resolved and the gossip will produce amused giggles, not malicious trouble; all these happenings on canvas are, after all a cementing of the sisterhood.
After suffering a stroke in 2009, Magsaysay-Ho stopped painting. She died in Manila in May of 2012 three weeks before her 98th birthday. Because she died a Canadian citizen, a posthumous resolution to confer the title of “National Artist” on her did not pass. Her legacy continues.