For over 80 years now, Mabini Street, the two-kilometer street located in Ermita has been the nexus of touristy and artistic activities. In its heyday, it teemed with art galleries and shops, making it Manila’s most colorful alley.
Let us look into a publication from May 2013 about the past:
The Golden Era Of Mabini Art
Nemiranda is one of those artists from Mabini Street who experimented and tried to get out of the mold.
“When Mabini Street became a commercial area after the war, it was where most post-war art galleries sprung up. Needless to say, it became the breeding ground where some of our National Artists mingled and interacted with the public, producing remarkable works of art in both the Amorsolo style and in modernism,” says Nemiranda, who is the Committee Head on Visual Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
Mabini Art can be traced back to reigning conflict between the conservatives and the modernists during that era. Its establishment happened when the conservatives walked out in protest against the result of the 1955 annual art exhibit-competition organized by the Art Association of the Philippines.
At that time, the conservatives followed the Amorsolo style of painting, identified with the realism of National Artist for Visual Arts Fernando Amorsolo, while the modernists carried on the modernist take of National Artist Victorio Edades.
The battle between the two styles began when Edades challenged the idyllic landscapes and smiling Filipina maidens of Amorsolo with his distorted images, rough brushstrokes and indistinct bodies which were influenced by Cezanne and Gaugauin.
The conflict escalated when the winners of the competition were announced. The conservatives, including Galvez, Gabriel Custodio and Simon Saulog, felt that the judges favored the modernists. They withdrew their artworks from the exhibit and displayed them across the street, just in front of the AAP exhibit.
All born between 1911 and 1920, Galvez, Custodio and Saulog, together with Ben Alano, Cesar Buenaventura, Cesar Amorsolo and Fermin Sanchez, became the forerunners of Mabini Art. The next generation, who began their practice 20 to 30 years later, was composed of Paco Gorospe, Roger San Miguel, Asing Wong, Emy Lopez, Rick Gonzales, Rexi Gonzales, Salvador Cabrera and Leonardo Zablan.
In the 1970s, a third generation emerged. But this group was composed of two types of artists: one, “those who were not particular about the authorship of their works, thus remaining largely anonymous, and those who have been discontented with their lot and were struggling to make a name outside of Mabini Art in order to be recognized as ‘serious artists’ by the dominant institutionalized art world in the Philippines.” (Tan, Pearl: “Mabini Art: Hsitory, Practice and Aesthetics,” 1992)
(ext quoted from a publication by Ma. Glaiza Lee, Claire Adelene F. Abengoza and
Robina G. Olarte, Published: May 27, 2013)
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