Hernando Ruiz Ocampo was one of the pre-war Thirteen Moderns, a group of modernist artists founded by Victorio Edades in 1938. His first works reflected the harsh realities of his country after the Second World War. But his style was to famously evolve: by the time Ocampo received the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1954 — for a series of 14 still-life — he had already been painting in a highly abstract way. He was doing totally nonobjective themes and had abandoned figuration completely.
Leonidas Benesa writes that:”Ocampo concluded that the greatest commitment of the artist was to art itself.”
Using movement and bold colors, Ocampo utilized fantasy and fiction as the basis for his works. His art is described to be "abstract compositions of biological forms that seemed to oscillate, quiver, inflame and multiply" like mutations.
The central motifs are flame like forms which cast oscillating shadows,and reflections on the surrounding design of interrelated elements. Works from 1977-78 such as these represent the full flowering of his visual melody period. It also represented the final maturation of the abstract style of the artist in painting the search of the filipino spirit.
Ocampo’s color instincts were always on the bright side of the spectrum, by temperament and by choice.
That he preferred observing the various organic life forms and local color elements which surrounded him everyday to studying art abroad on travel grants offered to him by foreign governments may be a reason why his works look like no one else’s.
In 1972 Cid Reyes asked HR Ocampo: “You have been accused of not having changed at all, that you’re merely repeating yourself.” HR Ocampo replied: “ Of course, I change. But the changes are so subtle that you don’t notice them. Compare the paintings that I did five years ago to the paintings I’m doing now. Certainly, I don’t jump from one style to another. Once you’ve found your true style, you won’t change it, would you?”
Having had no formal training in art and never having left the country, he may have created some of the most creatively original work, described by Ricaredo Demetillo as “most expressively Filipino.” He was posthumously declared as a National Artist for the Visual Arts in 1991.
Provenance: Private Collection, Manila