CPAR (NAOTP)

• National Artist Award


  Highest distinction/merit bestowed upon Filipino artists whose body of work is recognized by their peers and more importantly by their countrymen
• Process of Nomination and Conferment of the Order

  1. CCP/NCCA announces opening for nominations

  2. Receiving of nominations; screen and deliberate

  3. NCCA and CCP submit a list of recommendees to the president

  4. The president issues a proclamation conferring the rank and title

  5. The Order of National Artists is conferred during the ceremonies
• Criteria for National Artist

  • The artist must be a Filipino citizen or at least at the time of the nomination as well as those who has passed on can still be nominated as long as he/she was a Filipino before death
  • The artist should have contributed "in building a Filipino sense of nationhood" as seen in their works
  • The artist should have led the way in a new and creative expression of style, separating themselves from others
  • The artist's work should be noteworthy and an embodiment of excellence, further his/her chosen field of creative expression
  • The artist should be critically acclaimed and accepted by legitimate institutions and peers
• Benefits of being a National Artist

  • Title and rank as National Artist
  • Medal bearing the insignia of National Artist as well as citation
  • Cash gift of P200,000.00 to the living artists and P150,000.00 for those who were recognize after their death which will be given to the heir
  • Monthly pension of P50,000.00 with medical and hospitalization benefits not exceeding P750,000.00 per year
  • Life insurance
• The country had its first National Artist & the official title "Grand Old Man of Philippine Art"
• He developed the backlighting technique. His citation underscores all his years of creative activity which have "defined and perpetuated a distinct element of the nation's artistic and cultural heritage".
• The poet of Angono, single-handedly revived the forgotten art of mural and remained its most distinguished practitioner for nearly three decades. In panels such as those that grace the City Hall of Manila, he turned fragments of the historic past into vivid records of the legendary courage of the ancestors of his race.
• Paints distorted human figures in rough, bold impasto strokes, and standing tall and singular in his advocacy and practice of what he believes is creative art. Emerged as the "Father of Modern Philippine Painting".
• His paintings are described as visions of reality teetering/shaking on the edge of abstraction. As a young boy, his talent was revealed through the copies he made of the Sagrada Familia and his mother's portrait that he copied from a photograph.
• He is a versatile artist, being both a proficient painter and sculptor. His devotion to the visual arts spans 40 years of drawing, printmaking, graphic designing, painting and sculpting.
• A painter and multimedia artist who distinguished himself by creating an authentic Filipino abstract idiom that transcended foreign influences. Most of his paintings of harmonious colors were inspired by Philippine landscapes. He use of rice paper in collages placed value on transparency, a common characteristic of folk art.
• A pioneer "Neo-Realist" of the country. Remembered for his singular achievement of refining cubism in the Philippine context. He belonged to the so-called "Thirteen Moderns" and later, the "Neo-realists".
• A self-taught painter, was a leading member of the pre-war Thirteen Moderns, the group that charted the course of modern art in the Philippines. His abstract works that left an indelible mark on Philippine modern art. His canvases evoked the lush Philippine landscape, its flora and fauna, under the sun and rain in fierce and bold colors. He also played a pivotal role in sustaining the Philippine Art Gallery, the country's first.
• A painter, sculptor, and designer for more than 40 years, created masterpieces that exemplify an ideal of sublime austerity in expression and form. From the Carnival series of the late 1950s to the recent Cyclist paintings, Luz produced works that elevated Filipino aesthetic vision to new heights of sophisticated simplicity
• He is one of the most vital and dynamic figures who emerged during the 60s. As one of those who came at the heels of the pioneering modernists during that decade, he blazed a formal and iconographic path of his own through expressionistic works of high visual impact and compelling meaning.
• Bencab started his career in the mid-sixties as a lyrical expressionist. Bencab, who was born in Malabon, has christened the emblematic scavenger figure "Sabel". For Bencab, Sabel is a melancholic symbol of dislocation, despair and isolation–the personification of human dignity threatened by life's vicissitudes/changes, and the vast inequities of Philippine society.
• A native of Sulu, is a sculptor, painter, photographer, ceramist, documentary film maker, cultural researcher, writer, and articulator of Philippine Muslim art and culture. Through his works, the indigenous ukkil, sarimanok and naga motifs have been popularized and instilled in the consciousness of the Filipino nation and other peoples as original Filipino creations.
• Signed his works as Aguilar Alcuaz was an artist of voluminous output. He is known mainly for his gestural paintings in acrylic and oil, as well as sketches in ink, watercolor and pencil. He was also a sculptor of note and has rendered abstract and figurative works in ceramics, tapestries and even in relief sculptures made of paper and mixed media, which he simply calls "Alcuazaics".
• Acknowledged as the "Dean of Filipino Illustrators" was a master storyteller – in images and in print. His illustrations and novels were products of that happy combination of fertile imagination, a love of storytelling, and fine draftsmanship. In 1934, he was a central force in the formation of the popular art form of comics. He was a part of the golden age of the Filipino comics in the 50's and 60's.
• A product of the Revival period in Philippine art. The result was the UP Oblation that became the symbol of freedom at the campus. Acknowledged as his masterpiece and completed in 1933, The Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan stands as an enduring symbol of the Filipinos' cry for freedom.
• Napoleon V. Abueva, a native of Bohol, was the youngest National Artist awardee. Considered as the Father of Modern Philippine Sculpture, Abueva has helped shape the local sculpture scene to what it is now. Among the early innovations Abueva introduced in 1951 was what he referred to as "buoyant sculpture" — sculpture meant to be appreciated from the surface of a placid pool.
• Acknowledged as the Folk Dance Pioneer. This Bulakeña began her research on folk dances in the 1920's making trips to remote barrios in Central and Northern Luzon. Her research on the unrecorded forms of local celebration, ritual and sport resulted into a 1926 thesis titled "Philippine Folk Dances and Games," and arranged specifically for use by teachers and playground instructors in public and private schools.
• Dubbed the "Trailblazer", "Mother of Philippine Theater Dance" and "Dean of Filipino Performing Arts Critics", pioneer Filipino choreographer in balletic folkloric and Asian styles, produced for over 50 years highly original, first-of-a-kind choreographies, mostly to her own storylines.
• A choreographer, dance educator and researcher, spent almost four decades in the discovery and study of Philippine folk and ethnic dances. She applied her findings to project a new example of an ethnic dance culture that goes beyond simple preservation and into creative growth.
• A dancer, choreographer, stage designer and artistic director. He achieved phenomenal success in Philippine dance and cultural work. Through the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group (ROFG), he had effected cultural and diplomatic exchanges using the multifarious aspects and dimensions of the art of dance.
• The name Alice Reyes has become a significant part of Philippine dance parlance. As a dancer, choreographer, teacher and director, she has made a lasting impact on the development and promotion of contemporary dance in the Philippines.
• A poet, playwright, and novelist, is among the Filipino writers who practiced "committed art". In his view, the function of the writer is to act as the conscience of society and to affirm the greatness of the human spirit in the face of inequity and oppression. His novel Mga Ibong Mandaragit, first written by Hernandez while in prison, is the first Filipino socio-political novel that exposes the ills of the society as evident in the agrarian problems of the 50s.
• Hernandez: '"Art is a miraculous flirtation with Nothing! Aiming for nothing, and landing on the Sun."'
• Hernandez is considered as one of the finest contemporary poets regardless of race or language. He used Doveglion (Dove, Eagle, Lion) as penname, the very characters he attributed to himself, and the same ones explored by e.e. cummings in the poem he wrote for Villa (Doveglion, Adventures in Value). Villa is also known for the tartness of his tongue.
• Is regarded by many as the most distinguished Filipino writer in English writing so variedly and so well about so many aspects of the Filipino. Has also enriched the English language with critics coining "Joaquinesque" to describe his baroque Spanish-flavored English or his reinventions of English based on Filipinisms. As a journalist, Nick Joaquin uses the nome de guerre Quijano de Manila but whether he is writing literature or journalism, fellow National Artist Francisco Arcellana opines that "it is always of the highest skill and quality".
• Carlos P. Romulo's multifaceted career spanned 50 years of public service as educator, soldier, university president, journalist and diplomat. Essentially though, Romulo was very much into writing: he was a reporter at 16, a newspaper editor by the age of 20, and a publisher at 32. He was the only Asian to win America's coveted Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for a series of articles predicting the outbreak of World War II.
• A writer, poet, essayist, critic, journalist and teacher, is one of the most important progenitors of the modern Filipino short story in English. He pioneered the development of the short story as a lyrical prose-poetic form. Arcellana's published books are Selected Stories (1962), Poetry and Politics: The State of Original Writing in English in the Philippines Today (1977), The Francisco Arcellana Sampler (1990).
• A better known as N.V.M. Gonzalez, fictionist, essayist, poet, and teacher, articulated the Filipino spirit in rural, urban landscapes. Among the many recognitions, he won the First Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940, received the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1960 and the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining in 1990. He became U.P.'s International-Writer-In-Residence and a member of the Board of Advisers of the U.P. Creative Writing Center. In 1987, U.P. conferred on him the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, its highest academic recognition.
• A biographer, has the distinction of having written one of the earliest biographies of Jose Rizal titled The Great Malayan. His books and articles span the whole gamut of Philippine history and culture–from Bonifacio's trial to Aguinaldo's biography, from Philippine cartography to culinary arts, from cash crops to tycoons and president's lives, among so many subjects. He made a record earlier on when he became the very first Filipino correspondent for the United Press Institute.
• A poet, fictionist, teacher and literary critic is one of the finest Filipino writers in English whose works are characterized by a remarkable fusion of style and substance, of craftsmanship and insight. As fictionist, Tiempo is as morally profound. Her language has been marked as "descriptive but unburdened by scrupulous detailing." She is an influential tradition in Philippine literature in English. Together with her late husband, Edilberto K. Tiempo, she founded and directed the Silliman National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, which has produced some of the country's best writers.
• F. Sionil Jose's writings since the late 60s, when taken collectively can best be described as epic. Its sheer
• trial to Aguinaldo's biography, from Philippine cartography to culinary arts, from cash crops to tycoons and president's lives, among so many subjects
• He made a record earlier on when he became the very first Filipino correspondent for the United Press Institute
• A poet, fictionist, teacher and literary critic

  One of the finest Filipino writers in English whose works are characterized by a remarkable fusion of style and substance, of craftsmanship and insight
• As fictionist, Tiempo is

  Morally profound