The Art of Friendship with Onib Olmedo
By Victoria T. Herrera

The relationship between an artist and a gallery owner is primarily a business one.   Although like any successful partnership, this is enriched by a strong bond of friendship and deep respect for one another other.   Such was the case with the late Onib Olmedo and Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz, owner of Galleria Duemila.   

Their friendship dates back to the early 1970s when Silvana has just entered the gallery business in Manila.  Since then until Onib’s passing in September 1996, they would regularly meet in exhibition openings, sketching sessions, or simply for a cup of coffee or a meal with other artist friends.  Through the years, she has acquired a collection of Onib’s works – purchased at gallery price or in exchange of art materials.  The latter were mostly during sketching sessions with live models.   Galleria Duemila has also hosted __ solo exhibitions for Onib through the years.  

This collection of drawings and paintings reveal the close bond between the artist and his friend and “gallerist.”  The latter is a term quite new in the art world and was introduced recently in North America.  A gallerist is not just any art dealer.  It is someone concerned with the care of artists, rather than just the “quick turnover of art objects.”  In the local art scene, this may apply to other veteran gallery owners who have gained the trust and respect of artists.   

For almost thirty years, Onib’s career as a full-time painter gained him a reputation as one of the leading expressionist painters in the country.  An architecture graduate from the Mapua Institute of Technology, he decided to shift career in 1970 after a 12-year stint as an architect.  This chosen second career was triggered by a simple gift of a box of oil pastel crayons from a fellow architect.  While using the crayons, he experienced more creative freedom not found in drafting and designing buildings. 

In this exhibition, My Friend, Onib Olmedo, selected works are mostly drawings that have a spontaneous and instinctive quality, thus revealing a creative phase that precedes the artist’s paintings on canvas.    The few works on canvas were selected to represent specific periods in the artist’s development.  Entrance Only, a 1974 painting of a washed out vaudeville actor, was Silvana’s first purchase.  It was part of Onib’s second solo show held in 1974 at the Galerie Bleue, then a gallery managed by Rustan’s Department Store in Makati.  Here his pictorial style leans more towards realism than the later expressionism.  But the image is no less expressive.  The scene is raw and unsophisticated, relating to the seedy corners of the city Onib was all too familiar with.  He grew up in the district of Sampaloc in Manila and frequented Ermita and Malate where many of his later subjects could be found – destitute families, prostitutes, and street urchins.   

His renderings of faces are not portraits in the conventional sense of the word.  These do not portray a specific person but rather a character type or a profession.  Moreover, he draws out more of the anxieties rather than feelings of ease and contentment.  The portraits of a Piano Teacher and a Worker already show Onib’s exploration of the expressive power of distorting form, color, and space.  Although he did not explicitly identify himself with Social Realism, his works speak deeply about society and human conditions.

Like most visual artists, the female nude was a favored subject for Onib.  He regularly attended sketching sessions with the Saturday Group, a habit he started early in the 1970s when he became good friends with Hernando R. Ocampo.  This veteran artist gave Onib his personal critiques and advice while stressing on the strengths of the younger artist’s distinct expressionist style.  This close bond is documented in a collaboration of the two for a large-scale drawing.  Unlike the conventional rendering of the female nude, Onib’s women are not sensuous, submissive nor seductive. Their bodies are heavily drawn.  Some are angular and emaciated, while others are hefty and over-burdened.   

Onib always carried with him a sketchpad and a drawing tool – a pen or charcoal pencil – wherever he went.  Whether from imagination or from an actual scene, he captured different types of people and in different settings.  Known for his sense of humor, Onib translated this wit in some images of people caught in candid poses.  Some interesting works in this collection are the small drawings rendered on the back of exhibition invitations.  Silvana recalls these may have been drawn during the opening events.  Onib may have been bored or simply found some of the guests, maybe even friends, interesting subjects for character sketches.   

Artists and friends close to Onib all remember how this regularly soft-spoken man can give life to a party with his witty jokes and stories.  His close friends also recognize his talent in writing satirical poetry.  However, one never heard him speaking ill about anyone.  Yet, in a more public sphere, through his painting and drawings, Onib Olmedo awakes our visual senses and sensibilities to realities we often tend to ignore. 

The exhibition My Friend, Onib Olmedo is on view at the White Cube Gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Manila from 27 September to 27 October 2007.  This is organized by the Galleria Duemila and in line with the Onib Olmedo Retrospective at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.