Legaspi was a Filipino painter who was named a National Artist of the Philippines. He studied art in the Philippines and abroad. He helped nurture modern art in the Philippines and was influential in bringing cubism to the country. Legaspi's paintings evolved over his career from early monochromatic works to highly colorful pieces incorporating figures and organic/geometric forms. He received many awards recognizing his significant contributions to Philippine art.

1. (Born in Tondo Manila 2 Apr il 1917
Death in Metro Manila 7 April 1994)

2. A National Artist in painting,
Legaspi was the son of Manuel
Legaspi and Rosario Torrente. He
was married to Vitaliana Kaligdan
with whom he had five children.
His daughter, Celeste, is one of
the most gifted proponents of
Filipino popular music.

3.  Legaspi earned his Certificate of
proficiency at the University of the
Philippines School of Fine Arts in
1936. He then pursued art studies
abroad as a scholar at the Cultura
Hispanic, in Madrid, 1953-1954. He
subsequently entered the Academie
Ramon in Paris, France.

4.  Legaspi espoused the cause of
modem art from its early years and
nurtured it with his fellow
pioneering modernists, Carlos V,
Francisco, Galo B. Ocampo,
Hernando R. Ocampo, and Vicente
Manasala, to full maturity. Today, he
is the most active surviving member
of the Thirteen Moderns.

5.  While his work shows the influence of
cubism, cubism's rigorous intellectual
approach of its intellectual phase in
Legaspi's works gives way to the more
harmonious aspect of its synthetic phase.
There is a facetting of figures into larger
planes which overlap and cut through space
in transparent curvilinear rhythms and
which achieve a richly textured
orchestration of hues and tones.

6. Except for his earlier
monochromatic canvases,
Legaspi's paintings fully release
the expressive potential of color,
creating a sensuous chromatic
ambience with a variety of subjects
from dancers and flower gardens,
to dynamic street scene.

7.  His early paintings, from the period
immediately before and after the war,
reflect his personal reaction to the
national trauma. "Man and Woman"
(also entitled Beggars), 1945, in an
expressionist idiom involving
distortion, shows a couple in rags
amidst the skeletons of buildings which
we broken like surrealist sculpture.

8.  Another important work, "Gadgets,"
1947, done in two versions, reflects
the increasing importance of
machines in the post-war
industrialization period, as well as
what he perceived was the insidious
threat of human metamorphosing
into machine.

9.  Legaspi spent many years as
magazine illustrator and artistic
director in advertising agencies,
while he took time in between his
work to do paintings. In 1963 he held
a one person show at the Luz Gallery.

10.  This marked the beginning of an
active phase with major pieces, such
as Chiaroscuro, in which rocks and
stone quarries become his central
image and symbol and in which
structure is the predominant
concern.

11.  Spatial depth is suggested by the darker
tonalities of the recesses in the granite rock
that half conceals organic forms, like curling
fetuses, embedded within, In these and
subsequent works, Legaspi strove towards
an artistic language based on the integrity of
shapes and figures that would convey an
entire range of values, from strength to
sensitivity, power to grace, dynamism to
lyricism.

12.  In 1968 Legaspi finally left
advertising to devote his time to
painting. His subsequent works
significantly modified the cubist
idiom by rhythmic curvilinear lines
and planes contrary to the angularity
of the original style.

13.  From 1974 onward his paintings
became more chromatic, sometimes
even effulgent with color; layers of
transparent passages create prismatic
effects Figures dynamically cut
through space in gestural
movements.

14.  Light enhances color and form or
dematerializes and dissolves them into
airy transparencies, creating resonances
in space. The human figure, in its well
articulated muscular and structural
frame, increasingly becomes an eloquent
vehicle for expression, while a play of
contrasts ensues between organic form
and geometric structure, transparency
and solidity,

15.  the flexible and the inexorable, tensions
that generate the vitality of Legaspi's arts.
In 1976 Legaspi did a number of
multilayered paintings on wood panel to
give actual depth and shadows to the
illusion of spatial movement. He has also
done a large diptych with a crucified torso
spanning the two panels; the graffiti of the
times are scattered ever the wall like
background.

16.  Through the 1970s and 1980s, Legaspi
paintings that deal with universal
human experience, such as The
Survivor. These large, heroic canvases,
done in his dynamic style, convey the
surging, straining movements of
human beings in aspiration, struggle,
and triumph.

17.  Aside from being dramatic
metaphors of human condition, they
are also visual correlatives of inner
moods. The "biota" imagery explores
organic and visceral movements
beneath the surface where human
beings are one with nature, woven of
the same tissues as the trees.

18.  The images of struggle and
nightmare transpose onto the
imagery of art the emotional tensions
of everyday that seek resolution in
dreams. In 1978 Legaspi held a big
retrospective show at the Museum of
Philippine Art.

19. Ten years later he held a major
three-part exhibit, including the
Jeepney series in which the
dynamism of the imagery bring
together the spatial and temporal
dimensions, dream and reality, the
past and the present.

20.  Legaspi's awards from the Art
Association of the Philippines are:
fourth prize, Sick Child, 1948, first
prize, Gadgets, 1944; fourth prize,
PIanters, 1949; and third prize, Ritual,
1951. He won first prize for Stairway to
Heaven in the Manila club Art
Exhibition in 1949.

21.  His Symphony won an honorable
mention award in the Manila Grand
Opera House Exhibition in 1950. He
received the Patnubay ng Sining at
Kalinagan award from the City of Manila
in 1972. He received the Gawad CCP para
sa Sining award from the Cultural
Center of the Philippines in 1990. He
was proclaimed National Artist in
painting in 1990.

22. Legaspi’s
Paintings

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