The received canon on the history of art in the Philippines has portrayed abstraction in modern painting as an artistic current that figured dominantly from the 1950s to the early 1960s. In the decade that followed, however, it has been critiqued as having been co-opted by the market and the State—interpreted as indexical to the dimming of the radical potential it once promised. As abstraction has been generally lodged onto the wider genus of the modern, this perceived exhaustion also came to signify the decline of local modernism in painting, a decline said to be superseded by the streams of thought and practice regarded as the contemporary. Critical of the notion of a sharp rupture between the modern and the contemporary, this paper examines the persistence of the former by examining the case of abstraction in painting during the decades in which its decline was purported to have begun. Specifically, it centers on the practices of abstraction by Marciano Galang (1945–2001) and Alfredo Liongoren (1944–2025), the discourses that stem from these, and how they responded to the violences enforced and maintained by the form of modernity that was developing in the Philippines during the time. These practices point toward complicating discourses on the notion of nation: the lack of complete congruence among its peoples, the perilous relationships it holds within and outside of its territorial bounds, and the replicative logics of empire it continues to perpetuate. By highlighting these, the article argues that abstraction did not simply decline but persisted in ways that resonate with what art historian Patrick Flores postulated as “continuing modern”: wherein the modern did not only coexist with the contemporary, but also, at times, acted as an articulation of the latter.

Local literature on abstract landscapes has not only been cursory and sparse but has also drawn dominantly from abstraction’s tendency to underscore the modernist idea of the individual. As a result, these works have rarely been discussed in relation to matters beyond the self—such as others in society and ecology. This is striking, as literature on landscape painting in general often render the art historical category in relation to humanity’s links with nature and other human groups. In an effort to address these gaps, this study uses the concept of spirituality in examining Glenn Bautista’s abstraction, articulated through his delicate forms of landscapes. While spirituality is known to emphasize the person’s self-reflexivity, it shall serve as a lens in surfacing the role of the artist’s practice in his search for the sacred and his understanding of the entanglement of humanity and the environment, specifically in the context of ecological destruction through the theological notion of eschatology. In the process, this study will forward the concept of landscape not as a genre, but as a medium, employed by the artist to understand, construct, and present himself a human in relation with other humans, the Divine, and the planet.

Treading a formulated continuing modern framework, the study seeks to reanimate the discourse on abstraction in the field of painting in the country during the 1970s, by exploring its persistence through its continuous relationship with modernity—including how it is particularly conceived in postcolonial terms through the matrix of the nation. It attempts to surface other narratives on the stream of artistic practices, whose influential literature dominantly, but also necessarily, portrayed it in relation to the cooptation of the State. From this set of literature, a good number understandably dwell on the elusive concept of national identity, and frequently examine the art object or collectively through the oeuvre in the process. The study speculates on the potential of provisionally minimizing these tendencies as lenses in historicizing abstraction, and instead, invites an alternative entry point in examining it: as ‘practices’ that respond to and negotiate with the modernity of its time, with its various manifestations including the notion of nation, gleaned in the lens of geopolitics. The study considers the abstraction performed by Marciano Galang (b. 1945, d. 2001) prior the 1970s to furnish historical breadth to the framework; and those by Lao Lianben (b. 1948) and Glenn Bautista (b. 1947, d. 2014) during the focal decade of study. Writing on these practices, it doubles as an attempt to further make sense of how abstraction coexisted with the slippery concept of the contemporary, revisiting the latter’s critiques against the former, most especially abstraction’s supposed exhaustion.

Gathering several of National Artist Federico Aguilar Alcuaz’s works from the late 1950s to the 1980s, the exhibition reveals a glimpse to the general contours and the evolution of the artist’s style, as he explored different subject matter and media both here and abroad. Specifically looking into his artistic practice presses the questions as to what it means to be a global artist, and how it intersects with his grammar of modernism. The essay attempts to respond to these questions through its effort to reap out themes that surface from the artist’s works in the exhibition.

Mobilizing the concepts of aenigma and nostalgia, the analyses of Gelvezon-Téqui’s printmaking practice and retrospective exhibition in 2020, respectively, enabled the openness to the potentials of obscurity in relaying contesting and complicating discourses on how phenomena in sociality, particularly patronage and resistance, are dominantly understood.