Victorio C.
Edades (December 23, 1895 – March 7,
1985) was a Filipino painter. He led the
revolutionary Thirteen Moderns, who engaged their
classical compatriots in heated debate over the nature
and function of art. He was named a National Artist in
1976.
Victorio Edades was born on December 23, 1895 to
Hilario and Cecilia Edades. He was the youngest of
ten children (six of whom died of smallpox). He grew
up in Barrio Bolosan in Dagupan, Pangasinan. His
artistic ability surfaced during his early years. By
seventh grade, his teachers were so impressed with
him that he was dubbed "apprentice teacher" in his art
class. He was also an achiever from the very
beginning, having won awards in school debates and
writing competitions.
After high school, Edades and his friends traveled to
the United States. Before enrolling in Seattle, Edades
incidentally made a detour to Alaska and experienced
working in a couple of factories. Nonetheless, he
moved on to Seattle and enrolled at the University of
Washington where he took up architecture and later
earned a Master of Fine Arts in Painting. The
significant event that stirred Edades, and made him
as what he is known now, was his encounter with the
traveling exhibition from the New York Armory Hall.
This art show presented modern European artists
such as Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso and
the Surrealists. His growing appreciation to what he
saw veered him away from the conservative
academic art and Realistic schools and thus he began
to paint in the modern manner. The two former
schools of thought were inclined more towards idyllic
subject matter, and require a mastery of refined
detailing. What attracted Edades to the modernist
movement was its principle to go beyond the idealistic
exteriors propagated by Impressionism and Realism.
Modernist thought encourages experimentation in
artistic expression and allows the artist to present
reality as he sees it in his own way.
During his journey to America, he participated in art
competitions, one of which was the Annual Exhibition
of North American Artists. His entry The Sketch
(1927) won second prize. When he returned to the
Philippines in 1928, he saw that the state of art was
"practically dead." Paintings he saw dealt with similar
themes and were done in a limited technique that
mostly followed the works of Fernando Amorsolo, the
first Philippine national artist and the most popular
painter of the time. He recognized that there was no
creativity whatsoever, and that the artists of that time
were merely "copying" each other. So in December,
Edades bravely mounted a one-man show at the
Philippine Columbia Club in Ermita to introduce to the
masses what his modern art was all about. He
showed thirty paintings, including those that won
acclaim in America. It was a distinguished exhibit, for
the Filipino art circle was suddenly shaken by what
this young man from Pangasinan had learned from
his studies abroad. Viewers and critics were
apparently shocked and not one painting was sold.
Edades helped organized the University of Sto.
Tomas Department of Architecture in 1930 and was
its acting head. In 1935, he was appointed as Director
of the UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts,
which he organized under the wing of Architecture.
He was guided by the existing American curricula
when he made the Fi Painting. On February 12, 1977,
UST conferred on Edades the degree of Doctor of
Fine Arts, Honoris Causa.
Edades retired to Davao City with his family. There he
taught for a time at the Philippine Women's College
and resumed his career as an artist. He died on
March 7, 1985.
Artistic development[edit]
Early styles after his stint in architecture already show
his inclination towards modernist technique. In The
Market and The Picnic, his choice of subject matter
do not take flight from pleasant daily scenery; yet his
brush strokes and observance of non-proportionality
in the figures made his teachers consider him "very
ambitious." His earlier works already showed his
affinity towards the style of Cézanne and other Post-
Impressionists.
The height of his artistic development is his dynamic
entry into Philippine art in 1928 with his solo exhibit at
the Philippine Columbia Club. Here he mounted his
most renowned work, The Builders. This work is the
sum total of all the other pieces included in the show.
They are a far cry from the works of the first Philippine
national artist and most popular painter Fernando
Amorsolo and the other classicists who painted bright
cheery scenes of flawless Filipinos and their idealized
daily routines. Edades, on the other hand, presented
figures in muddy earth colors – yellow ochres and raw
sienna accented by bold black contours. Subjects are
distorted figures (those whose proportions defy
classical measure), and Edades’ brush strokes are
agitated and harsh. The choice of his subject also
caused quite a stir to those who viewed the show. He
portrayed tough, dirty construction laborers and
simple folk wrestling in dung and dust. Even his
nudes are nothing like Amorsolo's portrayal of the
Filipina at her best.
With the uproar Edades' ideas raised, he knew that he
cannot make a living out by merely painting what he
wished. So he got by producing commissioned works,
particularly murals. He did murals for prominent
individuals (like Juan Nakpil) and institutions. His later
works are said to be ‘flatter.’ His portraits and genre
paintings in Davao are not seen to be as heavy or
solid as his earlier phase with The Builders. From
Cézanne, Edades grew more interested in the style
of Utamaro of Japan and other artists whose charm is
in color rather than solidity.
By introducing modern ideas into the Philippine art
scene, Victorio Edades managed to destroy the
conventions of domestic art, and also got rid of the
clichéd ideology he believed stunted the development
of Philippine art. His defiance to what the
Conservatives structured as ‘art’ was a conscious call
for real artistic expression. He attested that "art is
ever the expression of man's emotion, and not a mere
photographic likeness of nature. Thus to express his
individual emotion, the artist is privileged to create in
that distinctive form that best interprets his own
experience. And the distortion of plastic elements of
art such as line, mass and color – is one of the many
ways of expressing one's rhythmic form." That was
the reason why his disproportionate figures are made
that way – for the sake of composition.
Through his continuous propagation of modern art as
shown in his works and teachings, Edades proved
that modernists were not fooling people as Guillermo
Tolentino asserted. Dialectic-ally, Edades explained
that Modern Art is not anti-Classicist. He said, "From
the technical point of view, Modern Art is an
outgrowth of Classical Art. Modern Art is the
interpretation of the Classical concept conditioned by
the artist's new experience with the aid of improved
means of aesthetic expression." Not conforming to the
academic perception of art, he made art available to
the common man. Through his determination to stand
by his ideology, he became a bridge between the past
and the present.
