Joanna Montederamos BSGE-1 M061 Art

Appreciation
7:00-8:30 AM

Assignment 3.2

National Artists of the Philippines

1. Francisca Reyes-Aquino (March 9, 1899 – November 21,

1983) was a Filipino folk dancer and academic noted for her
research on Philippine folk dance. She is a recipient of the
Republic Award of Merit and the Ramon Magsaysay Award
and is a designated National Artist of the Philippines for
Dance. Born in Lolomboy, Bocaue, Bulacan on March 7,
1899. Her parents were Mr. Felipe Reyes and Mrs. Juliana
Santos. She finished her college in the University of the
Philippines until she became a professor in Physical
Education.

She is the author of “Philippine Folk Dances and Games”

where she focused on studying our native dances. She was
given the National Artist Award or Gawad Artista ng Bayan,
the highest national recognition given to Filipino Artists who
have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine Arts and to the cultural
heritage of the country in 1973. She served as supervisor of physical education at the
Bureau of Education in the 1940s. The education body distributed her work and adapted the
teaching of folk dancing in an effort to promote awareness among the Filipino youth
regarding their cultural heritage. President Ramon Magsaysay conferred her the Republic
Award of Merit in 1954 for her “outstanding contribution toward the advancement of Filipino
culture”. Her contributions to physical education also introduced the subject to the American
school curriculum.

Reyes-Aquino also had other books published including Philippine National

Dances (1946), Gymnastics for Girls (1947), Fundamental Dance Steps and
Music (1948), Foreign Folk Dances (1949), Dances for all Occasion (1950), Playground
Demonstration (1951), and Philippine Folk Dances, Volumes I to VI.

2. Arturo Rogerio Dimayuga Luz (November 26, 1926 –

May 26, 2021) was a Filipino visual artist. He was also a
known printmaker, sculptor, designer and art administrator.
A founding member of the modern Neo-realist school in
Philippine art, he received the Philippine National
Artist Award, the country's highest accolade in the arts, in
1997. Luz attended the School of Fine Arts at the University
of Santo Tomas in Manila. He also went abroad to study at
the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from 1947 to 1949, the Brooklyn
Museum Art School in New York from 1949 to 1950, and the Académie de la Grande
Chaumiere in Paris from 1950 to 1951.
While Luz was pursuing college, he began exhibiting his works. At the 1962 International Art
Salon in Saigon, South Vietnam, Luz won first prize for his work. He also garnered an award
from the California Art Association, and was a recipient of the Republic Cultural Heritage
Award for Painting of the Philippine Republic in 1966. He was also recognized as the
Outstanding Young Man In Art by The Manila Times.
Luz produced art pieces through a disciplined economy of means. His early drawings were
described as "playful linear works" influenced by Paul Klee. His best masterpieces were
minimalist, geometric abstracts, alluding to the modernist "virtues" of competence, order and
elegance; and had been further described as evoking universal reality and mirrors an
aspiration for an acme of true Asian modernity.
From 1976 to 1986, Luz served as the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of
Manila and is a frequent participant of exhibits held at the museum. He owned the Luz
Gallery, which according to the National Commission for Culture and the
Arts "professionalized the art gallery as an institution".

Works:

Imaginary Landscapes

Bagong Taon

Candle Vendors
3. Salvacion Lim-Higgins (January 28, 1920 – September
15, 1990), also known professionally as Slim, was a
Filipino fashion designer known for her haute couture. She
is considered by many Filipino culture critics to be the
mother of the modern terno. In 2022, she was named
a National Artist of the Philippines, being the second
fashion designer to receive the distinction following her
contemporary Ramon Valera.
Salvacion Lim-Higgins was born on January 28, 1920, to
Luis Samson Lim Katiam and Margarita Navera Diaz. Her
father was a Chinese immigrant who was involved in
the ship chandler industry while her mother was a
housewife. Salvacion had six other siblings.
A native of Legazpi, Lim went to Manila to study fine arts at the University of Santo
Tomas (UST) and aimed to be a painter. She had Botong Francisco as her mentor in
UST. Her studies was disrupted by World War II.
She would later enroll at the Traphagen School of Design in New York before returning to
the Philippines in 1952.
World War II led her to pursue a more practical career in fashion design. After the end of the
war, while waiting for school to resume, she sent sketches of her fashion design to
the Manila Times, and began going by the trade name "Slim". Along with her elder sister
Purificacion and family friend Consuelo Barberan, Slim would set up a fashion design shop
in Manila in 1947 which later moved along to what is now Taft Avenue. Slim, would be
heavily influenced by Hollywood culture of the 1950s and 1960s and would frequent Europe
and New York to study fashion collections, learn techniques, and buy designer clothes to
further improve her craft.
In 1960, Slim and Purificacion founded the Slim's Fashion and Art school, the first fashion
school in the Philippines. Slim briefly retired to become a housewife after getting married in
the 1960s but came out of retirement in the mid-1970s. She would open her second shop
along Amorsolo Street.
Works: