Travelling exhibit celebrates Negrense nominee for National Artist Award

“Bitter Sugar, The HeArt of Nune Alvarado” has touched ground at Art Camp Gallery, Greenbelt 5 for a two-week show, 18 – 31 January marking the third leg of a travelling exhibit paying tribute to the works of Nunelucio Alvarado, renowned painter from Sagay City, Negros Occidental and nominee to the Order of National Artist.

Gallerist Atty Leonides David (LLB 1988) said the travelling exhibit is organized in support of efforts “to elevate Nune Alvarado” to the Order of National Artist. The City of Sagay nominated Alvarado to the Order of National Artist in the visual arts category in June last year. The nomination received resolutions of support from the Negros Occidental Provincial Board, the city councils of Sagay and Cadiz, and the barangay councils of Old Sagay and Fabrica, as well as the backing of various groups and individuals. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), administrator of the National Artist Awards, is expected to announce awardees in April. Alvarado is the first nominee for the visual arts category from the Visayas region.

On display at “Bitter Sugar” are 18 paintings spanning Alvarado’s works during the period 2003 to 2018, three of them large paintings 20 feet in length and 4 - 5 ft in height, all of them compelling narratives of life, work, and the unyielding spirit of men and women as well as children amid oppressive conditions in the haciendas and sugar centrals of Negros, the artist’s home province. Alvarado’s fame ensues from his dramatic visual articulation of social justice issues in these landscapes of industrial sugarcane farming throughout his more than four decades of work as an artist. On his own and as a member of artists’ groups such as Pintor Kulapol and Syano Artlink he has sought to influence other artists to engage in social advocacy and to nurture young artists.

Alvarado, who could not come to the exhibit due to illness, is quoted about the contradictions articulated in “Bitter Sugar,“ the exhibit’s title: “For us to have sugar on our table, thousands and men and women, some children have to go through bitter working conditions. And that is not right ... “ 

Among the works on show are Dagway sa Tapangka (Image/Face in the Chair), Panagbuhi (Means of Livelihood) and Kaubay (Companion)”, three large works hugging the inner walls of the gallery space, engulfing the viewer in the gritty as well as the commonplace realities of hacienda life through stylized depictions characteristic of contemporary expressionism and of Alvarado’s works. 

Speaking at the opening program, Randal Urbano of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila narrated how his appreciation of social realism was heightened as he was introduced to Alvarado’s art in a class of the late critic Alice Guillermo. Alvarado’s works, he said have been the subject of many exhibits and have found temporary as well as permanent homes in galleries, museums and other art spaces here and abroad and this is testimony of the impact of his social activism through art.

In his welcome talk, David, a long-time admirer of the artist’s works and advocacy, recalled how his passion for art collecting, and eventual entry into the art market was triggered off by an exhibit of Alvarado’s works some 20 years ago. He acquired all the works in the exhibit of the then still relatively unknown painter and hung them in his law office as he had no other space to show them at the time. Since then his collection of Alvarado’s works has grown and he has nurtured a relationship with the painter, now 74 years of age, visiting him occasionally at his home in Sagay.

“Bitter Sugar” at Art Camp ends on 31 January. The exhibit will then move to its fourth and final leg at Art Anton Gallery at Conrad Hotel, Pasay City in February. The exhibit premiered at The Manila Bang Show at Space at One Ayala last 14-17 November, then journeyed to its second stop at Art Elaan in Alabang in December.