Today, August 27, is the artist Fernando Zóbel’s 100th birth anniversary. He is remembered not only as one of the greatest Spanish Filipino artists of the 20th century, but also as a man of extraordinary insight into the arts, letters, and the humanities. His was an extraordinary life, luminous in every sense of the word.
Zóbel spent his formative years in the Philippines, where he was born, but would eventually move to Spain with long extended stays in Manila. His formal education and scholarly training took him from Europe to the US, particularly to Harvard where he got his degree and doctorate in Philosophy and Literature, followed by a stint as resident artist at Rhode Island School of Design.
Being in Manila in the ’50s, at a time when modernist ideas and influences were deviating from the training syllabus of traditional classical approaches, was for him a slower, quieter time that enabled discourse with fellow artists as well as insights into their artmaking. Artistic expressions and experimentations were making inroads into the Philippine contemporary art scene, with groundwork having been laid in 1937 by the 13 Moderns headed by Victorio Edades, and including Demetrio Diego, Arsenio Capili, Anita Magsaysay Ho, Botong Francisco, Cesar Legaspi, Bonifacio Cristobal, Hernando Ocampo, Diosdado Lorenzo, Vicente Manansala, Jose Pardo, Bonifacio Cristobal, and Ricarte Puruganan.
There was one art gallery, Lydia Arguilla’s Philippine Art Gallery, which opened in 1951. It was actually an exciting time to witness and be a part of the continuity that this period presented. In 1953, Fernando Zobel became the president of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP).
The friendships he made during this period, he kept throughout his life: Arturo Luz, Cesar Legaspi, Nena Saguil, Jose Joya, Hernando HR Ocampo. Architect Leandro Locsin, Lee Aguinaldo, as well as writers Rafael Zulueta da Costa, I.P. Soliongco, and Emilio Aguilar Cruz.
Zóbel soon became involved in the debate arising among the young painters of the moment about the relationship between the new art and tradition and the cultural identity of the Philippines. He published three articles on the subject, all of which are extremely enlightening about the artistic moment at that time: Pintura Moderna en Filipinas (Modern painting in the Philippines), Art in the Philippines Today and Filipino Artistic Expression.
In 1956, he was appointed as cultural attache to the Philippines by Spain, during this time he facilitated scholarships abroad for Arturo Luz, Nena Saguil, Cesar Legaspi, and Jose Joya.
Zobel was cross-cultured and was often referred to as a “transatlantic” artist. His work had a fluidity that always bridged past and present histories, worlds, and influences: Asian calligraphy, 18th-19th century European masters, Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry, American Abstract Expressionism, Philippine religious and syncretic imagery.
Fernando Zobel’s ‘Meditación en Blanco’ from 1966 (24 x 16 in), estimated at P11,000,000–P12,000,000
A work appearing at Salcedo Auctions’ “The Well-Appointed Life” auction on Sept. 14, 2024, titled Meditación en Blanco, done in 1966, shows Fernando Zobel’s mastery of concentrating on properties like surface, proportion, and scale, and visual elements like broad, blurred boundaries and a cube of darkness, a sense of ethereality, a meditation on the physical, and a seeking for the spirit. This was painted the year his mother, Fermina Montojo y Torrontegui, passed away. It was also the year he inaugurated the Museo de Arte Abstracto Espanol (Museum of Spanish Abstract Art ) in Cuenca.
A high point in his luminous life was opening this museum with its goals to spread positivity, to enable continuous discoveries, and to impact lives.
It has been called “the most beautiful small museum in the world” by the American art historian Alfred Barr. Medieval from the outside, ultra-modern on the inside, Casa Colgadas, as it is endearingly called, was a liberation of sorts and brought “a breath of fresh air to Spain” in the last years of General Francisco Franco’s regime.
Fernando Zobel’s “Gestos XXIX-Climbing” from 1979 (24 x 36 in), estimated at P7,000,000–P7,500,000
In another work being offered at the Salcedo auction, “Gestos XXIX- Climbing,” done in 1979, we see his personal style of going beyond mere representation of physical structure: diffused light in a liminal space around a delicate yet firm handling of black strokes, evoking a sense of transcendence, a sense of something higher than ourselves. In this year he extended the Museum of Spanish AbstractArt and added a library. This period (the ’70s) for him was an intense time of travel, museum visits, lectures, solo and group exhibits, collaborative publishing of books and journals.
His extensive catalogue of exhibitions, reviews, art donations, works in museums, and bibliography further show the depth and breadth of his multifaceted life and artistic career: artist, scholar, professor, art collector, art patron and writer. No other Spanish Filipino artist has been given two retrospectives in major museums in Spain: the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia and the Prado. The latter exhibition is traveling to Manila and opening at the Ayala Museum, quite serendipitously, on the eve of the auction.
In his luminous life, Zobel always extended himself outward with purpose and influence, this was marked with a deep sense of inner clarity and alignment with his values and background, which allowed him to shine in whatever he did. In all his artistic endeavors, he would overcome challenges with grace.
“The Philippines have [sic] a great excitement, namely that everything still has to be done.You must create the paintings and also the people that go with them. You must share your excitement and in turn excite. It is the only way. The alternative is to retreat snarling into a lonely cave, and, believe me ,work without resonance, deteriorates,” Zobel wrote on April 25,1962, to artist Lee Aguinaldo
Living with a clear sense of purpose and passion, he produced an entire body of work, from drawings, illustrations, prints, caricatures, to paintings and writings. Today they are quiet reassurances of what art can do for the soul.
“I suspect that I have pretty well found my way of painting. I only hope I’ll live long enough to say everything I want to say,” Zobel wrote to Aguinaldo on July 31, 1962.
