Filipino Artists In Their Studios

Artists and their ateliers featured in book

By Amierielle Anne A. Bulan and 

Ma.Czarina A. Fernandez

A NEW coffee-table book on Philippine art by former Varsitarian artist and photographer documents through beautiful photography and informative text the ateliers or work studios of 75 of the country’s foremost artists, what critics have described as a very helpful “archival” project to record the creative process that goes into masterpieces of the visual arts.

“Filipino Artists in their Studios” is published by the Manila Bulletin and conceptualized and photographed by visual artist-photojournalist Jose Vinluan “Pinggot” Zulueta, a BS Fine Arts in Advertising Arts graduate of the old UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts.

“Our goal is to give a glimpse of the artists’ lives, not just a usual profile presentation of them with their artworks,” Zulueta told the Varsitarian during the book launch last Oct. 30 at the Fiesta Pavilion of the Manila Hotel.

The 324-page book is not only a compilation of photographs by Zulueta that originally appeared in the C’est La Vie or lifestyle section of the Bulletin. It is also accompanied by insightful texts and captions written by writers and journalists such as Paul Zafaralla, Barbara Dacanay, Dennis Ladaw, and Isabel de Leon.

“Usually, the audience see just the artwork alone, mounted or framed in an exhibit,” said CJ Tañedo, one of the artists featured in the book. “But once they get to see the studio, they can see the artists in a new light, and they can see his work habits and the natural setting in which he works.”

Tañedo, a winner of the Metrobank art awards back in the late 1990’s, himself is a Thomasian.
De Leon, a News staffer of the Varsitarian during her student days and now the news editor of the Bulletin and a former Malacanang assistant press secretary, compared an artist’s studio to a bedroom which is “not accessible to anyone.”

“We were very humbled when they allowed us to enter their spaces,” De Leon said. “Not everyone can be granted the opportunity to enter an artist’s sacred space.”

Art enthusiasts like Silvana Diaz, who owns Galleria Duemila, the country’s longest running gallery, said the book gives new perspective on Philippine art.

“He [Zulueta] brings the client and the public who are not well versed in art into an intimacy and place where they see the artist in their environment. When you don’t have art education or study art history, you may penetrate into their intimate life this way,” Diaz said.

25 alumni artists
Among the 75 artists featured in the book, 25 are notable Thomasian alumni mostly products of the old College of Architecture and Design. Sculptor Ramon Orlina, National Artist for Visual Arts Arturo Luz, the late abstractionist Romulo Olazo and father of Philippine conceptual art Roberto Chabet are featured along with Antonio Austria, Manuel Baldemor, Gabriel Barredo, Andres Barrioquinto, Salvador Ching, Fil Delacruz, Danny Dalena, Mideo Cruz, Igan D’Bayan, Edgar Doctor, Alfredo Esquillo Jr., Raul Isidro, Prudencio Lamarroza, Julie Lluch, Sofronio Y Mendoza, Mario Parial, Mario de Rivera, Jose Tence Ruiz, CJ Tanedo, Ronald Ventura, and Juvenal Sansó.

Ruiz, who was part of the creative team behind the Philippine Pavilion in this year’s Venice Biennale, recalled the time when the book was still an idea.

“Why don’t I make a more active documentation of what’s happening in our art scene?” was the question asked by Zulueta to Ruiz back in 2008.

According to Ruiz, Zulueta was given the go-signal by the Manila Bulletin to start the project, and from there started a weekly feature in the newspaper that puts the spotlight on a local artist and his or her works.

“He would bring a young writer, and he himself was the photographer. Little did we all realize that that would be a book seven years later. It was all a happy accident,” Ruiz said in an interview.

The book has long been awaited by artists and art enthusiasts. Isidro, an abstractionist and a former fine arts dean of the Philippine Women’s University, said that the publication was “overwhelming.”

“Although there were books published before, this is different as it takes on a personal and intimate relationship with the artist,” Isidro said.

Meanwhile, veteran watercolorist Edgar Doctor said that this book is a breakthrough in the Philippine art scene because it gives recognition to local artists.

“It’s always the art more than the artist, and now the Filipino artist is given recognition,” Doctor said.
“Filipino Artists in their Studios” is available in leading bookstores nationwide.

The Varsitarian I 11/27/2015 I 7:23

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That’s Pinggot Zulueta, the man behind Filipino Artists in Their Studios

Text by AA Patawaran

Published May 6, 2018

I’m writing this straight out of the launch of the second volume of the artist and Manila Bulletin Lifestyle resident photographer Pinggot Zulueta’s monumental Filipino Artists in Their Studios at the Fiesta Pavilion of The Manila Hotel.

This book, along with the first of the series, is now available by order at The Manila Bulletin and soon also at National Book Store. Like the first, this hefty second volume features 75 artists of various mediums, but mostly visual. In all, the books have so far showcased 150 of the Philippines’s most important artists, established and emerging, from National Artists to very young artists who have shown great potential in pushing the envelope in Philippine art.

Kudos to Pinggot Zulueta for coming up with this book project! As a photo-journalist, who never quite forgot his calling as an artist, he had to be at the very least two people at once in order to come up with such a compendium. He was both creator and chronicler, looking from the inside out and from the outside in.

While pursuing his own art, which so far appears very fluid and open, readily shifting from traditional to experimental, from ink and pencil to oil and acrylic, from paper and canvas to wood, Pinggot has also spent the last decade invading the very private spaces of our artists at work. Armed with his camera and his unquenchable thirst to see art make its way from intention to expression, to watch his fellow artists struggle with the brush or the chisel and their thoughts on a quest to express what in many cases is inexpressible. Hence, the full-pager “Artist at Work” in Manila Bulletin Lifestyle’s arts and culture pages every Monday. Hence, this all-important record of the artistic ruminations of our time, Filipino Artists in Their Studios, volumes one and two.

There are many people to thank for this grand endeavor that redounds to our cultural benefit as a people, such as The Manila Bulletin management, particularly Emil C. Yap III, who has championed and nurtured it since “Artist at Work” was first introduced to Manila Bulletin Lifestyle, and everybody who put into words what Pinggot so poetically captured through his lens, writers like Jacky Lynne Oiga, Sara Grace C. Fojas, Pam Brooke A. Casin, and Hannah Jo Uy, also Terence Patrick Repelente, who stayed by Pinggot’s side day and night to proofread everything in the run up to the publication of this second volume. Credit must also go to Isabel de Leon, my predecessor as lifestyle editor, during whose term “Artists at Work” was born and the book idea was conceived. Erstwhile Manila Bulletin Lifestyle artist Eloisa Bernabe designed volumes one and two, the latter she did from start to finish, through unholy hours, though she is already employed elsewhere. And, of course, each of the 150 artists who make up these two volumes, who allowed Pinggot to penetrate their sanctum sanctorum, the very sacred space in which they would give birth, excruciating labor and all, to their art.

But all this is really just Pinggot. At the launch of volume two, I felt all awkward when several artists, many of whom were strangers to me beyond their exalted names, would ask me to sign their books. I would tell them “I’m no artist, in case you think I am” or “I have little to do with this book, except as an editor of some portions” because I felt unworthy to sign my name next to Pinggot’s, whose blood, sweat, and tears are the very ink in which this cultural gem is written.

Nevertheless, I am proud to have played a small part in Pinggot’s success. Filipino Artists in Their Studios is more than a compendium of Philippine art and artists. It is, in fact, a celebration of the process by which art is made. Other than the artist and his artwork, the focal point in these books, if I may say so myself, is his process (and place of work), the sweat in his brows, the oil stains on his fingers, the ink on his hands, the hours and the minutes he pours into his medium, not to mention the compulsions the artist has to grapple with in creating his art to question the status quo, to shake up the system, to break all records, to push envelopes, to open eyes and hearts and minds, to expand the soul, to ponder life and social justice and poverty and riches, to enrich our experience of life as humans and Filipinos.

Do not fear, Pinggot. Though we drink over it to drown our fears and we smoke through it to blur your doubts, I have very little doubt that you will live forever!

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Taking portraits of the Filipino artist

Text by Krizette Chu

Published March 3, 2018,

For someone who professes to not caring about his own legacy, who shies from speaking about his “identity,” the artist, painter, and veteran lensman Jose “Pinggot” Zulueta has ironically made it his life’s mission to chronicle those of his contemporaries.

As the creator and photographer behind the bestselling coffeetable book Filipino Artists in their Studios, Pinggot has invaded the most personal ateliers and workshops of some of the country’s most legendary painters, sculptors, and mixed media artists.

His labor of love is a massive 323-page book published by The Manila Bulletin that featured industry greats like Napoleon Abueva, BenCab, Federico Alcuaz, Manuel Baldemor, Renato Habulan, Raul Isidro, David Medalla, a paean to 75 of the greatest Filipino artists that ever lived.

Ambitious in scope, comprehensive by nature, painstakingly curated, this kind of project has never been attempted or done before.

The book gave the Philippines’ art fans an exclusive look at the spaces where great art is made, providing a glimmer of understanding of the idiosyncrasies, processes, and quirks of the artists. (Do you know Bencab’s studio is as huge as a full size basketball court and Antipas Delotavo’s, famous for his expansive murals, is the size of a small box, but brilliantly utilized with the use of mirrors?)

Within the year, the next volume, the second edition, is scheduled to be released, featuring yet another batch of the country’s most important artists.  This time, there will be more of those young contemporary artists, the current toasts of the art world and the crème de la crème of today’s new generation, who are coming into an industry that only as recently as 10 years ago was tough to break into and survive in.

With today’s artmosphere more appreciative of new talent, and with a more competitive market, readers can expect a different kind of story and flavor from the 75 artists of volume 2.  How will the new blood define their experiences and set up their work spaces?

Portrait by Sara Black

Apart from paying homage to his colleagues, what drove Pinggot to create something this monumental?

“When I was a kid going into arts, we were discouraged by our parents because arts didn’t seem like a viable livelihood. Parents used to tell their kids, ‘anything but Fine Arts,’” says The Manila Bulletin photographer.

Pinggot, too, has a unique vantage point. His day job is as photojournalist for The Manila Bulletin, which puts him in an enviable position of having, in his own words, “a foot in the door of publishing, another foot in the door of the art world.”

He continues, “By putting this together, I wanted to inspire the next generation to believe that they can pursue their dreams as artists. By telling the stories of those who have come before them, of those who struggled not just individually but collectively as they pushed the industry to a better place, I hope the young ones learn from us.”

As he himself, Pinggot says, has been inspired in the course of doing the book. “As an artist myself, I had to be extra careful not to be too inspired that I start following their styles,” he laughs. “But when you’re there, seeing them work, seeing the masterpieces created in their studios, it’s like you inadvertently pick up their styles, their mood, their energy, and I have to be careful! I am inspired by just how brilliant our artists in the Philippines are. I am inspired by how we can’t fit all these artists in one book.”

Visiting the studios also illuminate his own creative process. It helps him deal with his own work and, in some ways, sets him free to pursue his own art sans fear and pretensions.

His latest show, slated on March 8, called “Blinders,” features a series of paintings he calls his “most honest and raw” yet.

Along with Spanish artist Cesar Caballero and British artist Simon Mortimer, Pinggot will continue from where he left off from his last show “Catharsis,” using images of the human face to denote the purge of emotions. Only this time, the paintings focus less on the face, and more on the process of creation. “The artmaking,” he says. Here, the textures, materials take center stage.  The face taking shape is an afterthought.

On a still unfinished piece, paint is splattered violently across the canvas—done almost in a state of mental fugue.  “Under those colors are my emotions,” he says.

In this series of five paintings, Pinggot reveals his truest self. “They’re all self portraits,” he admits wryly. “Five portraits that show my loss of identity, my overwhelming sadness, my intense longing for my family.”

He whips himself into frenzy, working odd hours, from 2 a.m. until he exhausts himself. When he is done, he feels a cathartic sense of relief.

“This melancholia has followed me all my life, and it has become a part of me, there’s a longing I cannot explain,” he says. He has tried to subdue it, dabbling in cheerful geometric abstractions to drive away the somber mood that he feels has started to define his life and his works—and which he pursued for at least two years from 2014 to 2016—but finds himself staring forlornly at his canvas, with an urge to paint what he truly feels.

“I tried to veer into the non-representational, but I give up,” he shrugs, “I am drawn into doing autobiographical paintings.” Unlike other artists who have decided on a certain style to be identified with, Pinggot has swung on both ends of the pendulum, from abstractions to social realism, from painting seascapes to painting gory and dark shapes, to even creating installations out of found objects.

One of the biggest things he learned in pursuit of stories for the book, is that the only way a great artist stays true to his craft is to ignore the mechanisms of marketing in his work—ignore “branding,” ignore consciously crafting an identity, which runs counter to the basic tenets of selling their work.

“I do not create to sell, but to express, and I have come to accept that now, even when I was torn about it before,” he says. “My art speaks to those it resonates with. Life is too short to care about branding. Art is about who you are.”

And his book is an emphatic reminder—and a celebration—that one only needs to run on talent.

“The Filipino artist stands out—just look at the works of Jose Tence Ruiz, Rodel Tapaya, Ronald Ventura—our works are full of content and has an intellectual approach,” Pinggot says. “I’ve exhibited everywhere, from New York to New Zealand, and you could see how the Filipino artist has assimilated the best of our colonial cultures and made it their own. There is no artist like the Filipino artist.”

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