Thursday, September 30, 2010

Have you seen any mural by Enrique Liborio Ruiz?

Charcoal study for "Mindamora" (1928)

He was a senior high school student at Far Eastern College when Enrique Liborio Ruiz took nighttime courses under Fernando Amorsolo, I.L. Miranda and Vicente Rivera at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts.  Upon graduation, he and his parents went to the United States and enrolled at Yale University where he got his bachelor’s degree in fine arts.

"In Doubt" (June 1930)
In Yale, his interests got diverted to architecture and mural paintings, visiting public buildings in America noted for their mural decorations, and during vacations, working with acclaimed muralists Eugene Savage and Ezra Winter and stained glass window maker Emil Zundel.  Galo B. Ocampo (1939) would later note the influence of Savage and Winter in the mural paintings he was doing in the Philippines.   

June 1930 Panel
July 1930 Panel
In 1927, he met Juan Arellano, supervising architect of the Bureau of Public Works at that time, who was visiting New York.  Arellano encouraged him to study Javanese art, telling Ruiz that this is best suited for the Philippines.

Ruiz was back in the country in January 1930 after his graduation and a tour of the art scene in Europe. He got employed with the Bureau under Arellano, already the Chief Consulting Architect of the Government, to prepare mural decorations for public buildings.  Even at that time, funding for such endeavors was hard to come by, and there’s no knowing if the Ruiz plans ever got to be painted, and if so, did they survive the bombing of Manila or the scourge of time?

January 1931 Panel
In June 1930, he did the front page cover “In Doubt” of Philippine Magazine, which editor A.V.H. Hartendorp said was the portrait of a Filipino lady that Ruiz met in the US while he was in Yale.  The artist would do a series of twelve decorative Filipiniana panels for the magazine from June 1930 to May 1931 (5 of them shown here).  [Who could be keeping them?]

Ruiz did not stay long with the Bureau.  In 1932, he was already running his own business company devoted to decorative work and murals, and an early work was at the University Theater on Taft Avenue.

February 1931 Panel



This company could be this "group of artists [that] included Vicente Manansala, Victor Loyola, Marcelino Sanchez, Arsenio Capili, Lu Ocampo and Recarte Puruganan doing mural paintings with muralist Architect Enrique Ruiz as contractor and designer,” which Martino Abellana, known as the dean of Cebuano painters, joined early in his career. The group was  able to finish two big murals before the outbreak of World War II -- a religious mural at the San Marcelino Church and the mural of the Time Theatre.  This group or Ruiz himself could have done the mural in the Manila Hotel and in a room in Malacanang.  [Are these works still around?]

In his column City Sense in the Philippine Star (2008, December 27), Paulo Alcazaren wrote about the “magnificent mural” at the Time Theater comprising three panels:
  ‘The right panel features the “Vision of the Architect,” …the central panel tells the story of “The Wooing of Maria Makiling” … [and] the left panel portrayed “The influence of film,” showing the “producer upholding the contribution” of his art, the scripts, cameramen, actors and a “family”of artists towards the production of the movies shown in the theater.’  
April 1931 Panel
Hartendorp (1930) listed some works that Ruiz did in the United States.   They should still be around:

1.  “Mindamora” (1928, New Haven), “a painting showing the legendary queen of Mindanao receiving tribute from Sulu. A Korean friend posed for one of the male figures, but the magnificent queen was drawn without a model and entirely from his imagination.”

2.  “Radha Darshan” or “Call of Love” (1929) drawn from Hindu mythology, which was exhibited in the Grand Central Galleries in New York, and which won the second Prix de Rome, offered to American art students by the American Academy in Rome.

3.  “Saras Vati” (1928), “a small jewel-like painting of the Hindu goddess of culture.”

4.   A commissioned work foe a Connecticut millionaire, “an allegorical painting, representing modern New England, for his private library”

5.   “The Holy Family”, stained glass window of the Holy Ghost Church, Edgewater, New Jersey (executed before he returned to the Philippines)

Sources:

1. 
Hartendorp, A.V.H. (1930, June).  Enrique Liborio Ruiz, Painter. Philippine Magazine. 27(1):14-16.  Retrieved from The United States and its Territories, 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism at http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acd5869.0027.001.

2.  "Four O'clock in the Editor's Office." (1932, February).
Philippine Magazine. 28(9):488.  Retrieved from The United States and its Territories, 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism at http://name.umdl.umich.edu/acd5869.0028.001.

3.   Ocampo, Galo B. (1939, October). Mural Painting in the Philippines. 
Philippine Magazine. 37(10):408-409,421.  Retrieved from The United States and its Territories, 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism at http://name.umdl.umich.edu/ACD5869.0036.010.

4.   “Martino Abellana, Dean of Cebuano Painters”.  Cebu Artists Inc. Retrieved from  http://cebu-online.com/cai/abellana/abellana.php

5.   Alcazaren, Paulo. (2008, December 27). “The best of times (first of two parts)”. Common Sense. The Philippine Star. Retrieved from http://208.184.76.175/Article.aspx?articleid=427046

8 comments:

  1. Enrique Ruiz did the mural on top of the fireplace inside the library at Douglas MacArthur penthouse in Manila Hotel. Elvira Lagadameo did the underlayer of the mural. The composition of the painting had the National Defense Program for its theme represented by a man holding the seal of the Commonwealth of the Philippies and the American Eagle poised to protect the Filipino Family and workers against greed, famine and death represented by the sinister skeleton on the horseback. Unfortunately this painting was destroyed during the bombing of the Americans when they liberated Manila from the Japanese. Milagros Royeca Evangelista wrote about the mural in her biography "Bong To, The Settler's Doctor" which is going to be printed this year. She got her source from the scrap book of General Santos at General Santos Museum and from her mother, Elvira Lagdameo.

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  2. Do you happen to have a picture of the artist himself? Or any information on when he died or where his current family is?

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    2. Hi! He is my great grandfather :)

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    3. Hi Nico. Do you or your family have ANY information, history, pictures, birth/death dates, works of art, etc., relating to the artist Enrique Ruiz? Thanks. I'm in Manila, visiting from the States - cell # 09195853232

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  3. Hello there by any chance how can we reach you,,,heres my number by the way so that we can talk about your great grand dad if it is try calling this number 09395565322

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  4. We have a mural that was made by Ruiz picasso please send us a message or contact us with this number 09395565322 or +639563646044

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  5. I have a mural of your great grandfather that was painted in Baguio in 1930 are you interested it's approximately 8 feet wide and 7 feet high please reply

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