86th Birth Anniversary of National Artist Abdulmari Asia Imao
The #NationalMuseumPH celebrates the 86th birth anniversary of National Artist (NA) for Visual Arts Abdulmari Asia Imao #OnThisDay in 1936.
Imao, the first National Artist from Mindanao, was a sculptor, painter, photographer, ceramist, filmmaker, researcher, and writer. In 1954, a floating art exhibition by the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) arrived in Sulu where he met Tomas Bernardo (1918-1994) who encouraged Imao to go to Manila to study art. He earned his fine arts degree at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts with National Artists Guillermo Tolentino and Napoleon Abueva as mentors. He traveled to the United States of America to pursue graduate studies at Kansas University as a Smith-Mundt and Fulbright scholar. He also had two-year fellowships at the Rhode Island School of Design for sculpture and ceramics, and at the Columbia University in New York for photography and cinema.
The artist’s goal is to promote indigenous motifs in Southern Philippines — the naga, the okir/ukkil, and the sarimanok. The sarimanok is an ornate chicken-like figure or a decorative bird notable in Maranao Art. The “Darangen”, a Maranao epic describes the sarimanok as a messenger of “datus” or chieftain — thus a symbol of royalty.
Exhibited at The Pillars of Philippine Modernism, Gallery XVIII of the National Museum of Fine Arts is his 1975 acrylic painting “Sarimanok”. This is the only work of NA Imao in this medium at the National Fine Arts Collection wherein the sarimanok is depicted in a contemporary or modernist manner, placed in a plane of interlocking shapes.
You may also view other artworks of NA Imao at the Lilok, Hulma, at Tipon: Modern Sculptures in the Philippines (Gallery XXIX): Sarimanok (1996 and another dated 1969), and Fishes (1976).
Imao was conferred as National Artist for Visual Arts in 2006. He passed away on December 14, 2014, in Marikina City.
Text by NMP-FAD
Photo by Bengy Toda
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© The National Museum of the Philippines (2022)
