The Art of Duddley Diaz

Over the last thirty years, the artist Duddley Diaz has created a powerful body of work that defies categorization, creating sculptures that challenge notions of identity, sexuality, culture, and history. Departing from the impersonal and rationalist aesthetic of academic art, Diaz's work daringly combines the values of classical Renaissance sculpture with atavistic sources of inspiration in the figures of ancient mythology and Christian liturgical art. Goddesses, owls, and angels populate his cosmology, hewn from clay and terracotta, wood, cast bronze, brass, silver, and ox bone. His artistic range is no less varied than interpretations of his work. Diaz's unique artistic cosmology has gifted us with characters and figures that serve as vessels of sacred and profound messages.

This book is published on the occasion of the artist's mid-career retrospective titled Messenger of the Gods at the UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum. Written by noted art critic Alice Guillermo, it follows Diaz's development from his beginnings as a child prodigy, fashioning santos from sardine cans, to the enthroned goddesses of his maturity, culminating with his masterwork Pinoy Creed.

Published by Vibal Foundation, Inc. in 2010

94 pages / Paperback