H.R. Ocampo’s grasp on colors and tonalities is arguably one of the most iridescent and vibrant in Philippine art history. A melting pot of East and West, Ocampo’s decision to stay in the country despite many grants extended to him for studies abroad meant his abstractions are touted as quintessentially if somewhat ineffably Filipino. His colors brim; In the words of Fernando Zobel, his works do not glare in their brightness – they glow. “It is precisely this quality,” continues Zobel, “that gives them…their peculiar Philippine flavor.”
In this 1978 work, the vibrancy of an Ocampo palette takes center stage. Done in shades of green broken only by touches of cream-white, Ocampo shows his talent with colors in abstraction. One of the foremost colorists in the country (arguably in Philippine art history), he grapples with using color alone to express what form, shape, depth, and figurative subjects would have been able to do.
“In my pictures, I am interested in how shapes, hues, values, textures, and lines interact with one another in space rather than in capturing a photographic semblance of nature,” says Ocampo as Manuel D. Duldulao recounts in his book Contemporary Philippine Art. “I am more preoccupied with the creation of new realities in terms of stress and strain, rather than with the portrayal of such conventional emotions as hate, love, anger, etc.”
Self-taught Ocampo remains to be one of the most soughtafter Filipino artists. This 1978 work, done at the year of his death, is a culmination of his five-decade-long career, his lifelong process of learning evident in every painstaking pattern painted on the canvas. (Hannah Valiente)
PROPERTY FROM THE DON J. ANTONIO ARANETA COLLECTION