Cityscape, oil on canvas. (Photo courtesy of www.federicoaguilaralcuaz.com)

The grand news is: Alcuaz is now National Artist.     

At age 77, Alcuaz still looks the distinguished (Ilustrado) gentleman (his manners speak grandly his public persona; gentle his voice and movements; smooth his light chocolate complexion; baldish his head; trim his white goatee—all encased in a slight, hard body). In short, he looks not the master-artist; he dresses tastefully, why, in the grand manner of the boulevardier (a lost species).

But his eyes: how they alert you, how they stand out: they observe, gaze at you, probe the very depths of your soul. (Perhaps, a near-fatal car accident in the south of France, his brain concussed—he survived despite the danger involved—gave him a sharper insight and a grander vision to his abstract paintings. He survived another near fatal accident later, his head this time more injured than before, thus the partial memory loss. In between he was mugged on his way home from the bank and given a hard blow on the head.) 

He graduated high school from San Beda, earned a law degree from Ateneo, partly to oblige his lawyer-father, but desisted from hurdling the bar. Instead, fired-up he studied art at U.P. without earning a degree.He painted, doggedly, assiduously, turning out canvass after canvass.Unhappy with the rote of academic traditional painting, he painted his own way nevertheless. This seduced him to be bold, an unknown painter showing his wares, for the first time at San Beda College Hall. He showed his artistic prowess in portraits, a better offshoot than his early master Amorsolo. It was 1953. He was 21 years old: the debut of a future master.

In 1954, Lady Fortune gifted him with a scholarship granted by the Spanish Governement because of his second show at Centro Escolar University. On he sojourned to Madrid to study at the Academia de San Fernando, where Amorsolo learned from his master Sorolla. He was still Aguilar the painter. At the Academia, he lost himself grounding in the technique of The Masters (like Goya, Diego de Ribera)., in a kind of artistic “voyeurism.” Wheedling The Masters’s secrets. A slow process in itself: forming his own synthesis so he can create his own. By discarding the useless, using the useful.

Art now being personal, to paint restricted by the confines of an academy was…death! So paint outside he must. Thus, he chose Barcelona to be the fertile grounds for him to grow. He must give his imagination free rein. Barcelona became his home, the hotbed of avantgardism. He must stake his gifts. He chose to be influenced by two outstanding Catalan rebels, Tapies and Cuixart, but without aping their style but burning with their rage. The two were infusing young, hot blood into the anemia of modernist art.

Exhausting himself in the rigors of the classical mode, he formed his own visionary imagination of what he can create out of the abstract. He launched himself to be given attention, Barcelona awarded him in 1957 the prestigious Prix Montcada y Reixach, the first Filipino to receive it. A victor in the neck-to-neck artistic melee. Barcelona, the hotbed of modernist art in all Spain. So he was fast building his testaments to his own visionary artistic edifice. Painting became the joy of his life. From conservative to abstract, he made no leaps and bounds, blazing slowly his own path to abstraction. He made his foundations strong.

Now he was a powerful swimmer enjoying his very strength in the sea of his own mind. He found it a most potent ally. He swamdeeper and deeper, his creative self plunging down the depths of the sea of his naked soul.

There he grew new eyes; seeing differently they acquired their own unique vision. It was a Submarine World of Nightmare. But Nightmare with the purposive order. From this vantage point he hacked away the chaos endemic to Nightmare, revealing clearly the artistic brilliancy!

Metamorphose he must, like his art; he baptized himself ALCUAZ, to set him apart from two other Aguilars, members of the avant-garde spearhead, La Punyalada. Artist-painter; what is Alcuaz? Imagine him in Villa’s pregnant line, as Inventor of Great Eyes that exercises his every creative visionary thrust!

In true humbleness, Alcuaz confesses much of his early works are bad, very bad; and even now today, there is much dissatisfaction; perfection is evergoing, always when aiming at the potential of perfection. He immersed himself totally in mastering the classical before he attempted abstraction. When many of our painters jump into the river of abstraction simply because it is the contemporary allure. How Alcuaz went into his artistic calvary before he crucified his won artistic gnosis upon the cross of abstraction.

His mastership shines in his numerous portraits, along with the uncompleted 100 of our important social personalities, like President Marcos ( he is always dissatisfied with his works, his credo the masterpiece is still to be painted; his art aims high). Ironically, his portraits are worthy of Rembrandt; worthy too are the series (again uncompleted) called Las Tres Marias, his salute to Inang Pilipinas. His works are numberless; they house three apartments. Included here are the canvasses he did after Mt.Pinatubo’s eruption and the visit of Pope John Paul II. What are (to me) great canvasses too are his long unending series of abstracts with their pristine emerald stone beauty.And his undiscovered tapestries.

Alcuaz deserves more than the awards and distinctions of honor vested upon his mastership: Prix Francisco Goya, Barcelona, 1958; First Prize, Pintura Sant Pol del Mar; Diploma of Honor, International Exhibition of Art Libre, 1961, Paris; Second Prize, 4th Biennial of Tarrasa; Prix Vancell, Barcelona, 1964; The Decoration of Arts, Letters & Sciences of the French Government, 1964; The Award Order of  the French Genius, 1964; The Republic Cultural Heritage Award, Manila, 1965 (of which he is most proud). He has exhibited, besides Spain, of course, in Portugal, Germany,  France, Japan.

With Alcuaz, his artistic vision of the truth of the world hurts him into revelation, creation. What he sees is uniquely his very, very own . Truth burns like an unquenchable fire, inwardly. For it is the hidden Mystery of Man brings all this about.

With Victorio Edades’s death, we lost the last of the old generation of masters; it left a 30-year old gap. That gap is now bridged, inhabited by Alcuaz, the last of our younger masters. Art is his sole religion; the “ pure gold of artistic coinage.” His eloquent, ineluctable Mistress, even. A small man in stature, a genius big with his appetites and energies, and very passionate when it comes to His Art. The young generation, if only humble, has much to learn from This Master.

Alcuaz does The Filipino proud. He is the equal of the foreign masters anywhere! The true master that he is, he paints in the future. The master always does this.

Paradoxically. To the hard taskmaster the best painting is still the one left unpainted.