Fernando Zobel: Toward Abstraction Virtual Tour

May 23, 2020

Ayala Museum

Go on a virtual visit of our Toward Abstraction: Fernando Zobel exhibition. Take the time to sit down and contemplate with our 6-video tour.

ABOUT THE ARTIST & THE EXHIBITION

Fernando Zobel (1924-1984) completed graduate studies in history and literature at Harvard University in 1949. The following decade was a period of discovery for Fernando Zobel, a significant turning point as he began his life as an artist.

At mid-century, the search for cultural identity was foremost in the mind of a young nation that had just survived a cataclysmic world war. Zobel was a singular figure in Philippine art. His single-minded research on Philippine colonial imagery and architecture, archaeology and pre-colonial ceramics, and study of Chinese calligraphy and Japanese art informed and embodied his search for an artistic signature.

His study of Philippine colonial objects and religious imagery most likely provided visual pegs in how Zobel configured the semi-representational and subsequent non-objective compositions in his career. The polychrome and “brutal simplicity” found in Philippine colonial sculpture were incorporated into a new language of visual expression, where lines, movement, and color have supremacy and tangible presence.

Towards the end of the decade, the semi-figurative images metamorphosed into lines on canvas executed by syringe and dry brush in the Saeta and Serie Negra series paintings. Zobel had achieved pure abstraction.

FEATURED ARTWORKS:

FERNANDO NUÑO
Untitled (Fernando Zobel with Serie Negra paintings)
Undated
Photograph
Ayala Museum Collection
Gift of Fernando and Catherine Zobel de Ayala

FERNANDO NUÑO
Untitled (Fernando Zobel smiling)
Undated
Photograph
Ayala Museum Collection
Gift of Fernando and Catherine Zobel de Ayala

FERNANDO NUÑO
Untitled (Artist’s Tools)
Undated
Photograph
Ayala Museum Collection
Gift of Fernando and Catherine Zobel de Ayala

FERNANDO NUÑO
Untitled (Artist’s Studio)
Undated
Photograph
Ayala Museum Collection
Gift of Fernando and Catherine Zobel de Ayala

REFERENCES:

Journey into Space: The Visual Odyssey of Fernando Zobel. Makati City: Ayala Foundation, 2014.

Zobel: Contrapuntos. Makati City: Ayala Foundation, 2017.

ABOUT AYALA MUSEUM:

We’re Ayala Museum, an arts, culture, and history museum located in Makati, Philippines. Through this channel, we’ll be exploring stories drawn from the Ayala Museum and Filipinas Heritage Library’s art and ethnographic collections, delivered in fascinating bite-sized portions to be enjoyed by anyone, anytime, and anywhere.