Legaspi Drawings Padding around Asia, Europe, and America with a Ball Point Pen

Born April 2, 1917 in Tondo, Manila, Cesar F. Legaspi studied in the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, but after one semester of Painting switched to Commercial Art, where he won medals in Perspective and Illustration. After graduating in 1936, he enrolled for another semester in a class of the late Pablo Amorsolo. But it was not until 1939 that he started painting seriously.

An active member of almost all the art associations at the time, like the 13 Moderns, the Art Association of the Philippines, and the neo Realists, he participated in almost all their group exhibitions, including one in Cuba arranged by the Philippine Art Gallery. Ic support himself, meantime, he worked as art director of an advertising agency; Philprom.

In 1953, he stayed in Madrid on a scholarship grant from the Spanish government. Later he toured Europe, stopping in Paris for a month to study at the Academie Ranson under Professors Goetz and Selin. He went on to Switzerland and Italv. at which latter place he received word that he had been appointed delegate to the First Plastic Arts Conference sponsored by UNESCO in Venice.

He held his first one-man show at the Luz Gallery in 1963. In 1967 he was chosen to represent the Philippines at the Sao Paolo Biennial in the Graphic Arts, and then again in 1969. He resigned from Philprom in 1968 to devote himself to painting full-time. That year, he joined Hernando Ocampo and Arturo Luz in a three-man show at the Luz. He held his second one-man show in 1970, after a world trip financed by Amon Trading, and his third in 1971 again at the Luz.

In 1978, the Museum of Philippine Art put up a retrospective exhibition of his works, “Forty Years of Legaspi”. Later in the year, he was given the Professional Award for Painting by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association. In 1981, he was named to the Critics' Choice — Five Outstanding Living Artists. With four other Filipino painters, he exhibited at the Wraxall Gallery in London in 1982.

Commissions, another retrospective at the National Museum, a special exhibition of his jeepney series at The Metropolitan Museum, a show of eight silver-point drawings at the Finale Art File Gallery, a group-show with Ang Kiukok, Malang and Romulo Olazo at the Finale and in Cebu, and an angioplasty at the Makati Medical Center round up the decade.

Published by The Brix Gallery

180 pages / Hardcover