To the world, Fernando Amorsolo is one of the Philippines’ most important and prodigious painters.
In his lifetime, he drew or painted over 10,000 works: portraits of prominent Filipinos and Americans during a time of cataclysmic change; historical paintings, many showing the war against the Japanese; nude bathers and idyllic rural landscapes showing the beauty and nobility of farmers and fisherfolk; and illustrations in textbooks, novels, calendars, advertisements, and newspapers.
Like his good friend and contemporary, Guillermo Tolentino- sculptor of the Bonifacio monument in Caloocan and the Oblation in UP- Amorsolo helped give shape and form to our national identity. Four years after his death on April 24, 1972, at the age of 79, the Republic recognized Amorsolo’s immortal genius and art by honoring him as our first National Artist for Painting.
To a close apprentice and loving daughter, however, Fernando Amorsolo is first and foremost a sensitive father, enterprising provider and “family man,” having generously supported fourteen children. In 1916, he married Salud Jorge with whom he had six children; after her death in 1931 he married Maria del Carmen Zaragoza with whom he had another eight children.
Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo, the artist’s daughter from his second marriage, grew up to become a painter like her father; as one of five siblings who are painters, she is one of the moving spirits behind the Fernando C. Amorsolo Art Foundation, established in 2003 to preserve the National Artist’s legacy. The Diocese of Cabanatuan, recognizing Lazo’s own artistic gifts, commissioned her to create “Divine Mercy,” a religious painting that’s enshrined in the city’s St. Nicholas of Tolentine Cathedral.
“Papa was generous with all of us- and we had a big family,” Lazo recalls. “When I was a child, our family would go to the province with him when he wanted to paint scenes on the spot. He gave money to farmers whom he painted: to thank them for being part of his work…
“After he had a stroke, he’d give me and my sister some money- 150 or 250 pesos- for doing chores or favors for him, like taking care of the tourists who visited his studio at home.”
Many of those on-the-spot sessions took place in Nueva Ecija, where a branch of the large Amorsolo family established roots: first-born Virginia from the artist’s first family married Novo Ecijano Dr. Eli Ballesteros.
One of their children, Dominguita “Chu” B. Rivera, CIC BS Commerce 1974, now serves as a trustee of Cabanatuan-based developmental organization Alalay Sa Kaunlaran Inc. (ASKI); another child, Elito, is the artist-father of Eat Bulaga host Paulo Ballesteros. Two other sisters of Virginia married Valdez brothers: one of them, Gracia, is the mother of actress Eula Valdez, whose lovely features resemble those of the women in her grandfather’s paintings.
“Our family was close to Virginia, so we often visited her in Nueva Ecija when Papa was still alive. She was a couturière and made very good wedding dresses, so all of us siblings asked her to make ours.”
Lazo can’t recall which particular Amorsolo painting depicts a Nueva Ecija landscape: most probably, each painting is a composite of different rural settings from Bulacan (where Amorsolo met his second wife), Nueva Ecija, and Pampanga.
“Don’t you notice how in many of his paintings, the shape of the mountain is that of Mount Arayat? That was sketched in Nueva Ecija and Pampanga.”
While Amorsolo is described as a figurative painter, he was not a human camera who sought to depict people and places as they were: rather, he used his imagination to express his own vision of beauty and human dignity.
“Not all people in the countryside could dress in typical baro’t saya everyday. But he painted them in native dress anyway: that’s why he became a National Artist, it was really for our country.”
Did her father’s nudes faze her as a child?
“We were used to them. Papa didn’t need to explain what they were, as we were exposed to them; they were on the walls of our house. The way I see it, nudes show the anatomy of the woman or the man: you can see the skill of the artist in his rendering of body proportions. It’s art for art’s sake.”
Lazo assesses an oil on canvas, Lavandera (1932), in the lavish Amorsolo coffee table book that their Foundation published: it shows a newly bathed washerwoman by a hidden, sylvan stream, her body wrapped in wet white cloth.
She explains, “Look here at where he placed the highlights: you can see her anatomy beneath the folds of the translucent cloth. This is very beautiful.”
Despite being the artistic giant of 20th century Philippines, Lazo remembers Amorsolo as a humble man of artistic integrity. After a subject laughed at an unfinished portrait because, she said, it didn’t show her as she was- flaws and all- the painter listened quietly. Later, he quietly asked his daughter-apprentice Lazo to destroy the portrait: he would no longer finish nor sell it to the client.
“I thought, what a waste!” Lazo says. “It was a large and beautiful portrait on which he had already spent a lot of time. Thankfully, I convinced Papa to just replace her face with mine: the finished portrait showing a woman holding a fan- with my face- is still with me.”
Lazo also recalls that before he passed away, feeling very ill with diabetes and headaches, Amorsolo complied with her request to get up from bed to have his picture taken with a group of around 50 tourists who had come from far away.
“He went out, looking very weak. And all of them took pictures. And then they realized he really was very sick. But all he kept on saying was, ‘Thank you, thank you.’”
Lazo- by that time, her father’s photographer, secretary and over-all assistant- was worried that the painter would get angry after she confessed to showing those guests his many private albums of sketches: she risked his anger because she wanted him to know that one had exclaimed it was unbelievable that they were the work of only one artist.
And, instead of getting angry, Amorsolo smiled.
“Even if he had told me not to show those sketches of paintings to anyone,” Lazo said, “he looked happy to hear those words of appreciation.”
Lazo says that is her most luminous memory as her father’s apprentice.
To know more about The Master and his paintings, visit the website of Fernando C. Amorsolo Art Foundation at www.fernandoamorsolo.com.
