Victorio C. Edades - Artistic Development

Artistic Development

Early styles after his stint in architecture already show his inclination towards modernist technique. In The Market and The Picnic, his choice of subject matter do not take flight from pleasant daily scenery; yet his brush strokes and observance of non-proportionality in the figures made his teachers consider him “very ambitious.” His earlier works already showed his affinity towards the style of Cézanne and other Post-Impressionists.

The height of his artistic development is his dynamic entry into Philippine art in 1928 with his solo exhibit at the Philippine Columbia Club. Here he mounted his most renowned work, The Builders. This work is the sum total of all the other pieces included in the show. They are a far cry from the works of the first Philippine national artist and most popular painter Fernando Amorsolo and the other classicists who painted bright cheery scenes of flawless Filipinos and their idealized daily routines. Edades, on the other hand, presented figures in muddy earth colors – yellow ochres and raw sienna accented by bold black contours. Subjects are distorted figures (those whose proportions defy classical measure), and Edades’ brush strokes are agitated and harsh. The choice of his subject also caused quite a stir to those who viewed the show. He portrayed tough, dirty construction laborers and simple folk wrestling in dung and dust. Even his nudes are nothing like Amorsolo's portrayal of the Filipina at her best.

With the uproar Edades’ ideas raised, he knew that he cannot make a living out by merely painting what he wished. So he got by producing commissioned works, particularly murals. He did murals for prominent individuals (like Juan Nakpil) and institutions. His later works are said to be ‘flatter.’ His portraits and genre paintings in Davao are not seen to be as heavy or solid as his earlier phase with The Builders. From Cézanne, Edades grew more interested in the style of Utamaro of Japan and other artists whose charm is in color rather than solidity.

By introducing modern ideas into the Philippine art scene, Victorio Edades managed to destroy the conventions of domestic art, and also got rid of the clichéd ideology he believed stunted the development of Philippine art. His defiance to what the Conservatives structured as ‘art’ was a conscious call for real artistic expression. He attested that “art is ever the expression of man’s emotion, and not a mere photographic likeness of nature. Thus to express his individual emotion, the artist is privileged to create in that distinctive form that best interprets his own experience. And the distortion of plastic elements of art such as line, mass and color – is one of the many ways of expressing one’s rhythmic form.” That was the reason why his disproportionate figures are made that way – for the sake of composition.

Through his continuous propagation of modern art as shown in his works and teachings, Edades proved that modernists were not fooling people as Guillermo Tolentino asserted. Dialectically, Edades explained that Modern Art is not anti-Classicist. He said, “From the technical point of view, Modern Art is an outgrowth of Classical Art. Modern Art is the interpretation of the Classical concept conditioned by the artist’s new experience with the aid of improved means of aesthetic expression.” Not conforming to the academic perception of art, he made art available to the common man. Through his determination to stand by his ideology, he became a bridge between the past and the present.