Manuel Baldemor

Biography

Manuel Baldemor won his first major prize in 1972 for the mural “Paete I”. A year later the jury of the Art Association of the Philippines gave the grand prize to “Paete II” as well. Both works are named after the artist’s hometown.

He was born on 26 March 1947 in Paete, in the province of Laguna. He studied at the College of Architecture and Fine Arts of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. To pay for his studies he worked for artists in Mabini, and his classmates, by his own account, often asked him to help with their academic art plates. He was influenced by the modernist principles of Victorio Edades, a National Artist of the Philippines. In his senior year he worked as a layout artist and editorial cartoonist at the magazine Philippine Graphic; his work in publishing began there. His first solo exhibition, “The Graphic of Manuel Baldemor”, was held at the Hidalgo Gallery in 1972. Two winning years in a row led to his representing the country at the XIV International Art Exhibition in Paris in 1973. The critic Leonides Benesa called him “The Folk Artist”. In the 1970s Baldemor developed his own manner, joining rural memories to a simplified form that is called Folk Modernism. He tried watercolour, acrylic, tempera, oil, woodcut, ceramics, glass, grass paper and fine prints. In 1983 he won his third gold prize from the Association, for prints.

Sculpture is part of his work too. In 1982 he won a gold prize for sculpture with “Tribute to the Filipino Farmer”, dedicated to his father, Perfecto Baldemor; it had been shown at the City Gallery in Luneta in 1980. In 1999 he represented the Philippines at the 3rd Inami International Wooden Sculpture Camp in Toyama Prefecture, Japan, and made “Pamilyang Pilipino” there, four metres high and one wide.

He also writes. He is a member of the Writers’ Guild of the Philippines, publishes poems and essays, and wrote a weekly culture column, “Folio”, in the Sunday Times of the Manila Times (1992–1994) and then in the art and culture section of The Philippine Star (1997–1999). In 2025 he took part in the 51st National Writers Congress and made handcrafted trophies for the literary awards “Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas”. He has also done graphic design: souvenir programmes for the XI World Congress of Cardiology (1991) and the XXII International Conference on Internal Medicine (1994), and commemorative books on the history of the Philippines.

For many years he travelled on artist-in-residence grants: France, England, Switzerland, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, the United States, Mexico, Chile, Iran, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, India, Malaysia, China and other countries. He has been to more than fifty countries, and each became a subject for his work. The critic Rosalinda Orosa called him “The Chronicle of the Motherland”. In 1992 the Cultural Center of the Philippines named him one of its Thirteen Artists Awardees.

In 1995, for the 25th anniversary of his career, he showed two series at the Artists’ Corner in the SM Megamall shopping centre: “Sining Bayan”, on Filipino identity, and “The Global Village”, on his international ties; the guests included ambassadors of countries where he had worked as a resident artist. In 1998 President Fidel Ramos attended the inauguration of his mural “Pasasalamat”, which is on permanent display at the United Nations Center in Vienna. From 1 to 14 October 1999 his hundredth exhibition, “A Distinctive Milestone”, took place; by some reports, no other Filipino artist had shown his work a hundred times.

In 2009 he completed a glass mosaic, “People Power”, about the 1986 People Power Revolution, together with the French mosaicists Sylvie Henot and François Sand. It is installed in the Basilica of St. Thérèse in Lisieux. In 2013 Ambassador Carlos Salinas opened his exhibition “Symphony of Colors” in Madrid for the Philippines–Spain Friendship Day, and in Paris, at UNESCO, a one-day exhibition, “Philippine Skyland”, on the life and culture of the Ifugao people was held.

His fellow townspeople honoured him as well: in 1980 he received the “Gawad Sikap” award for visual arts for the 400th anniversary of Paete, in 1985 he became “Paetenian of the Year”, and in 2000 he was named among the ten outstanding living natives of the town. He organised exhibitions about Paete itself: “Salubong” at Nayong Pilipino (1978), “The Masters of Paete” (1980), and “The Paete Phenomenon” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

He lives and works still; to my mind, Paete remains his main subject.