Portraits by Federico Aguilar Alcuaz

In celebration of Heritage Month, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, in partnership with the Filipino Heritage Festival, will showcase the legacies of Philippine personalities of the ‘70s. The exhibit Distinguished Legacies: Portraits by Federico Aguilar Alcuaz will open tomorrow and will run until June 21 at the White Cube Gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

Federico Aguilar Alcuaz set out to paint a series of portraits of which he calls Outstanding Filipinos in the 1970s with the dream of turning over the portraits to the City of Manila. He did over a hundred of these portraits. A sizeable number of these were acquired by the GSIS through the GSIS Museum. The sitters were recommended by his close friends and included Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil, Roman Cruz, and lawyer Antonio Quintos. They also drew up a schedule of session for Alcuaz to do the actual painting.

The series of Outstanding Filipino portraits reflects how serious Alcuaz was for the subject of portraiture. With classical music normally playing in the background, he painted the sitters with the company of friends or the sitter’s friends. For him, portrait painting is a delicious mix of business and pleasure.

Some of the prominent Filipinos that he painted for the series include Victorio Edades, Fr. Horatio dela Costa Jr., art critic Leo Benesa, Corazon Aquino, Ferdinand Marcos, and Elvira Manahan. He also enjoyed painting ordinary citizens as evidenced by his so-called Tres Marias series.