UPAlumni.net

An Invitation from the UPAA

We would like to invite you to a very special exhibit of 100 nude paintings of UP Alumni Artists for the last 100 years on June 19 at 6pm, at the Mandarin Executive Suites, 4th floor of the Gateway Mall, Araneta Coliseum compound, Cubao Quezon City. The exhibit will end on June25. This is sponsored by the UP Alumni Association and I am one of those who organized the event. The exhibit gives honor the University on its one hundred years of existence and at the same time gives recognition to the participating artists. Should you fail to watch this exhibit, since it is open to all alumni, you really would miss so much in terms of art appreciation.

UP Fine Arts graduates are artists who belong to the upper crust of their craft. Our Alma Mater produces the endless reservoir of talents since its existence a hundred years ago. The exhibit shall attest to this. They are the cream of the crop, the primus inter pares, and among the finest in the land. Their names alone symbolize achievement, craftsmanship and excellence. The exhibit is participated in by 79 UP Alumni Artists. At no other instance has there been a large gathering of collection of works of arts from purely UP alumni. The exhibition of the works of 79 UP Alumni artists coming from different generations of the last 100 years of the University’s existence is the first happening of its kind.

There are only 14 National Artists in Visual Arts and nine of them are from UP. All nine UP Alumni National Artists namely: Napoleon Veloso Abueva, Fernando Cueto Amorsolo, Benedicto Reyes Cabrera, Carlos Villaluz Francisco, Abdulmari Asia Imao, Jose Tanig Joya, Jr., Cesar Torrente Legaspi, Vicente Silva Manansala and Guillermo Estrella Tolentino. have one or two pieces in the exhibit.It may be proudly mentioned that some of the participating artists are in line for the anointment of being proclaimed as National Artists.

The very young ones are the promising artists who might later on join the legions of UP Alumni Greats in this particular craft. It is not arguable that these other participating artists shall gain more accolades and honors as time goes by, While the very the young and promising artists gain more recognition, their works on exhibit shall become more precious and very valuable.

It is in this light that the Sponsors deemed it valuable that these rare works of art on exhibit should be compiled and recorded for posterity as this event might not be repeated in the next one hundred years. Moreover, in answer to our appeal to fund worthy projects of the University, the artists have positively answered the call for help and had agreed to sell most of these precious paintings. These works of arts will never be shown in public again. The different alumni owners of the paintings who loaned us their collections have been particularly generous owing to the fact that UP is celebrating its centennial year.

For this very special and rare collection, our curator has painstakingly put together a beautiful coffee table book, in full color, hard bound, with a size of 11 x 13 inches, 120 pages, with a first deluxe edition of only 1,000 copies.

Already, about 200 copies have been sold even before the book is off the press. We wish to sell to the fellowship before we run out of copies as these books will be available and for sale on the exhibition date.The coffee table book which contains beautiful prints of the entire fine pieces of artworks, is now a much sought after commodity as it is be the only testament to this rare and great cultural event.

Should you, wish to buy, the book costs 2,000 pesos, and please do it before the 19th of June. Email your orders now to up.alum@yahoo.com.