Nunelucio Alvarado: Eminent Visayan social realist

CEBU, Philippines - His name popped up during the press conference for the staging of the Visayas Biennale from November 16-19, 2010 being one of nine eminent Visayan artists honored with a “Garbo sa Bisaya” exhibition.

Nunelucio Alvarado, of Bacolod City, is said to have “delved into the raw inner psyche of a society in peril, while showing the timelessness of humanity’s bonds with the earth.”

It was mentioned in the compilation of profiles of the said nine Visayan artists that Alvarado is famed for his particular brand of Social Realism that uses very graphic lines, brilliant colors, and a strongly cubistic composition that is potently reminiscent of the moralistic tradition of the Mexican Tres Grandes, particularly the later work of David Alfaro Siqueros.

According to exhibition curator Dr. Reuben Ramas Cañete, Alvarado’s “socially conscious commitment to depict the onerous conditions of his home society in the sugarlands of the western Visayas, with its feudal-like structure of landlords and serf-like sakadas set to the timeless cycles of planting, burning and harvesting of the crops inform and delineate his artistic style.”

“The depiction of the back-breaking labor of the sakadas, contrasted to the hedonistic pleasures of the landed class, is rendered with an angular plainness that suggests the weight of tradition and social strata - one that is also simultaneously resisted in the uncanny ‘looking back’ gesture of the cane worker, with his or her solid body brandishing the de riger machete knife like a weapon,” the compilation read.

Dr. Cañete also cited that the “appearance of demonic animals like snakes, dragons, lizards, and masked troglodytes intensifies the sense of anger and angst, though this menagerie is rendered in a colorful palette of riotous colors that defuse the tension of its gravitas.”

It was also learned that “one almost feels that the critical depiction of both oppressor and oppressed are often inverted by Alvarado’s charming compositions which emphasize a strong design ethos anchored on indigenous aesthetics, popular culture, and the Visayan love for patterns and bold colors, although mitigated with a sophisticated reading of social commentary, and a stock of unique emblematic and iconic images, and gestural effects.”

“The stockiness of Alvarado’s figures also suggests an earthiness rooted in their daily toil, although strengthened with defiant nobility that also suggests an unearthly connection with earth spirits and nature forces, to whom these people are connected to as an animistic incarnation in the turbulent social present.”

 Last December 11, Alvarado’s exhibit at Kukuk’s Nest in Barangay Talamban opened, featuring his “Tagimata” paintings among many others.

Born in Bacolod City (Negros Occidental) in 1950, Alvarado graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Advertising from La Consolacion College in 1968. He also studied Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1969 on a Kabayao-Ledesma scholarship grant.

He mounted his first solo exhibition at Sining Kamalig in 1979, and has been included in many curated exhibitions at both local and international art venues, this was further learned.

His most recent major exhibition, according to the Visayas Biennale 2010 organizers, which is described as a retrospective exploring his career, was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in 2004.

Furthermore, it was learned from them that Alvarado is a founding member of Familia Pintura as well as the Black Artists of Asia in the 1980s. He also founded the group Pintor Kulapol in Fabrica, Negros Occidental in 1988. The formation of these artist groups was “aimed towards the utilization of the arts organization as parallel institutions that would actively involve artists to community affairs.”

Alvarado was invested with the Thirteen Artists Award of the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1992. (FREEMAN)