Nick Joaquin
ARTIST PROFILE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brief Biography
Nicomedes "Onching" M. Joaquin was born on May 4, 1917
in Paco, Manila. His mother, Salomé Márquez was a public
school teacher and Leocadio Joaquín, a colonel father in the
Philippine Revolution of 1896.
Nick Joaquin started to write short stories, poems,
and essays in 1934. Consider as a brilliant kid, he did not get to
finish high school, he discovered that he could study more by
reading books on his own, and his father's library had countless
of the books he mind to read. He wrote so variedly and so well
about so many phase of the Filipino throughout his entire life
span.
Education
He had attended Pacò Elementary School and had three
years of secondary education in Mapa High School but was too
intellectually restless to be confined in a classroom so he
decided to quit. The Dominicans, whose university is UST, also
offered him a two-year scholarship to the Albert College in
Hong Kong, and he accepted. Unable to follow the rigid rules
imposed upon those studying for the priesthood, however, he left
the seminary in 1950.
Major Works The Woman Who Had Two Navels
A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino
Manila, My Manila: A History for the Young
The Ballad of the Five Battles
Rizal in Saga
Almanac for Manileños
Cave and Shadows
May Day Eve
The Woman Who Had Two Navels
A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino
The Summer Solstice
Awards
José García Villa's Honor Roll (1940)
Philippines Free Press Short Story Contest (1949)
Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines
(TOYM), Awardee for Literature (1955)
Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Literary Awards (1957–
1958; 1965; 1976)
Harper Publishing Company (New York, U.S.) writing
fellowship
Stonehill Award for the Novel (1960)
Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1961)
Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award from the City
of Manila (1964)
National Artist Award (1976).
S.E.A. Write Award (1980)
Ramon Magsaysay Award for Literature (1996)
Tanglaw ng Lahi Award from the Ateneo de Manila
University (1997)
Several ESSO Journalism awards, including the highly
covetedJournalist of the Year Award.
Several National Book Awards
Style
Nick Joaquín the journalist has brought to the craft the
sensibility and style of the literary artist, the perceptions of an
astute student of the Filipino psyche, and the integrity and
idealism of the man of conscience, and the result has been a
class of journalism that is dramatic, insightful, memorable, and
eminently readable.
Critical Reception
What makes Nick Joaquin’s stories powerful is his rendition
of human experience that is remote and strange, far from reality
and the immediate present, and imagined out of historical
sources in a past irretrievable. He was by love of the past
possessed, clinging to that sense of things that even he himself
could only imagine in the present and the future of which he
himself could not envision.
Guillermo Tolentino
ARTIST PROFILE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brief Biography
Guillermo Estrella Tolentino was born in Malolos, Bulacan
on 24 July 1890. He was the fourth of eight children. His father
was a tailor, whose only artistic trait is the love of playing the
guitar. Guillermo or Memong, as his family called him,
inherited this artistic skill. Moreover, Memong became one of
the three best guitar players in the Philippines during his time.
Education He attend School of Fine Arts in University of the
Philippines under Vicente Rivera for painting and later for
sculpture under Vicente Francisco. He graduated in painting and
sculpture in 1915 with prizes in all subjects. By year 1919 he
decided to go to America and work as a waiter. Bernard Baruch
saw his small statue "Freedom" and granted him scholarship in
Ecole de Beaux Arts. After graduating with honor in Ecole de
Beux Arts, Guillermo Tolentino travelled Europe and study in
Regge Instituto Superiore di Belle Arti di Roma in Rome. He
graduated with highest honor in 1923 and held one-man
exhibition in Rome.
Major Works
Bonifacio Monument
Oblation
Bronze figures of President Quezon at Quezon Memorial
Life-size busts of Jose Rizal at UP and UE
Marble statue of Ramon Magsaysay
Saluto Romano
Designed the gold and bronze medals for the Ramon
Magsaysay Award
Seal of the Republic of the Philippines
Awards
1959 – UNESCO Cultural Award in Sculpture
1963 – Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award
1967 – Republic Cultural Heritage Award
1970 – Presidential Medal of Merit
1972 – Diwa ng Lahi Award
1973 – National Artist of the Philippines for Visual Arts
in Sculpture
Style
The artistic style of Tolentino, as seen in the Oblation, is a
combination of Classicism, Realism and Romanticism.
Classicism for Tolentino is "a living assimilative process which
forges all forces into a dynamic unity." It is not just a style or a
set of rigid rules, while his realism is in his concern for observed
detail as a way of stating truth. Though realistic details
overshadows classical schema, concept of making human figure
symbolic of an idea or value is classical. His Romanticism is
similar to those of the French that is filled with emotions and
passions.
Critical Reception
Tolentino’s work is not just celebration of physical form; it
embodies a quiet sense of dignity and nationalism lost to
succeeding artists. His secret was the way he made eyes, how
one sure quick jab in clay not only made a hole but gave a living
eye to his sculptures.