Pacita Abad | |
|---|---|
 Abad in 1990 | |
| Born | Pacita Barsana Abad October 5, 1946 |
| Died | December 7, 2004(2004-12-07) (aged 58) |
| Resting place | Basco, Batanes, Philippines |
| Citizenship | Philippines (1946-1994) United States (1994-2004) |
| Education | University of the Philippines Diliman (BA) Lone Mountain College (MA), Corcoran College of Art and Design Art Students League of New York |
| Spouse(s) | George Kleinmen (divorced) Jack Garrity |
| Relatives | Florencio Abad (brother) |
| Website | www |
Pacita Barsana Abad (October 5, 1946 – December 7, 2004) was aFilipino-AmericanIvatan visual artist. She worked in mixed media, integrating fiber art with painting; in particular she created mixed-media canvases usingtrapunto quilting as well as painting. Her work is characterized by vibrant color. Over more than 30 years, she exhibited her work in over 200 museums, galleries and other venues around the world, including 75 solo shows. Abad's work is now in public, corporate and private art collections in over 70 countries.
Abad was born inBasco,Batanes, on October 5, 1946, the fifth of thirteen children.[1][2] From 1949 to 1972, her father, Jorge Abad, represented thelone district of Batanes in theCongress of the Philippines for a total of five nonconsecutive terms. Her mother, Aurora Abad, served for one term (1966 to 1969) in the same elected position after Jorge Abad was appointedsecretary of public works and highways by PresidentDiosdado Macapagal. The Abad family moved from Batanes to Manila at the end of Jorge Abad's first term, returning temporarily when he was campaigning for reelection.[2][3] In Manila, Pacita Abad attendedLegarda Elementary School andRamon Magsaysay High School.
She graduated from theUniversity of the Philippines Diliman with aBachelor of Arts inpolitical science in 1968. The following year, she began graduate studies in law at the same institution.[2][3] During that time, she also began organizing student demonstrations protesting brutal tactics employed in the1969 Philippine general election, including those used in Batanes, where her father was running for another term. Following a demonstration nearMalacañang, Abad and several of her fellow student demonstrators met with PresidentFerdinand Marcos, drawing national media attention to their protest.[4]
Abad's father successfully protested his 1969 election defeat to the Commission on Elections and theSupreme Court of the Philippines, and the family home in Manila became a target of violence, including once being shot at. Although no one was harmed, Abad's parents encouraged her to leave the country and continue her law studies in Spain.[2] In 1970, on the way to Madrid, she visited an aunt inSan Francisco and decided to stay in the United States instead.[3][5]
While working as a secretary for a foreign aid foundation and as a home seamstress, Abad started a graduate program inAsian history atLone Mountain College. In 1973 she earned a master's degree with a thesis titled "The Role of Emilio Aguinaldo in the Acquisition of the Philippines by the United States from Spain: 1898".[2][6] She was offered a scholarship to attend theBoalt Law School at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. However, she deferred her enrollment after meetingStanford University graduate student Jack Garrity. The two traveled across Asia for a year, including a two-month stay in the Philippines. Upon returning to California, Abad relinquished her law school scholarship and took up painting.[2][3][5]
Abad and Garrity later moved toWashington, D.C. and then toNew York City, where Abad, until then self-taught,[7] took painting classes at theArt Students League of New York[5] and theCorcoran School of Art.[8] At the Art Students League, Abad studiedstill life andfigurative art under John Heliker andRobert Beverly Hale.[3]
From 1978 to 1980, Abad traveled with Garrity as his work brought him toBangladesh,Sudan, andThailand.[4] During their travels, Abad learned aboutIndigenous art techniques and traditions, as well as visitingrefugee camps, the experiences later informing her work as an artist.[3][2][5]
In Thailand, her attention was drawn to the refugee crisis along theCambodia–Thailand border following the outbreak of theCambodian-Vietnamese War. During several trips to the refugee camps at the border assisting in relief work, she spent time with the refugees, journalists, and relief administrators, and began to draw sketches and take photographs. Towards the end of 1979, Abad was painting based on the material she gathered and, by April 1980, she exhibited the 24-painting seriesPortraits of Kampuchea, also known as theCambodian Refugee series, at the Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art in Bangkok.[2][9] The exhibit did not include one of her most notable works,Flight to Freedom (1980),[10] which was not yet complete.[3]
From 1980 to 1982, Abad lived in Boston while Garrity attended a two-year graduate program atBoston University. Working at theArt Institute of Boston, she joined a weekly meetup of women artists and with assistance from fabric artiost Barbara Newman, developed hertrapunto painting technique. In 1981 she createdAfrican Mephisto, the first painting in her herMasks and Spirits series.[3][2]
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In 1982, the couple moved to Manila, where Garrity worked for theAsian Development Bank and Abad held two major solo exhibits:Pacita Abad: A Philippine Painter Looks at the World (1984) andPacita Abad: Paintings of People and Landscapes of Batanes (1985).[2][3] (One of the paintings from the second exhibit, anexpressionistoil painting calledSapuno, was laterlost; it resurfaced in a private collection in 2024.)[11]
In 1986, Abad and Garrity moved back to Washington, D.C. for his work at theWorld Bank;[3] that year she co-founded the Philippine Arts, Letters, and Media Council in Washington.[2] She was awarded three residencies at theRutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper inNew Brunswick, New Jersey, the first in 1990, and also two residencies atPyramid Atlantic Art Center inHyattsville, Maryland, in 1991. HerImmigrant Experience series was begun after she received a fellowship from theVirginia Center for the Creative Arts in 1994.[2] In 1994–95, she had a solo exhibition at theNational Museum of Women in the Arts,Pacita Abad: Artists + Community, and during this period she also participated in multiple group exhibitions in addition to a joint exhibition in Manila with Paz Abad Santos in 1995,Thinking Big.[2] In 1996, she was selected for theArt in Embassies Program and six of her trapunto paintings were hung in United States embassies in Africa and Asia.[2] She also created costumes for several plays.[2]
Abad and Garrity moved in 1993 to Jakarta, where Garrity worked forGajah Tunggal Group [id], and in 2000 to Singapore.[2] In 2001, they built a studio and residence on a clifftop site in Batanes, which they called Fundacion Pacita.[2] Also in 2001, she was an artist-in-residence atLindshammar Glassworks [sv] inLindshammar, Sweden, and was awarded a residency at theSouthwest School of Art and Craft inSan Antonio, Texas. In 2003, she was one of the first artists selected for a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute founded byKenneth Tyler.[2]
_by_Pacita_Abad.jpg)
Abad created over 4,500 artworks. Her early paintings were primarilyfigurative socio-political works of people and primitive masks. She did a series of large-scale paintings of underwater scenes, tropical flowers, and animal wildlife. Her most extensive body of work is her later colorfulabstract work, made up of many large-scale canvases and a number of smallcollages, on a range of materials from canvas and paper tobarkcloth,metal,ceramic, andglass.[12] Her work is characterized by vibrant color. In 1991, she painted a self-portrait in front of San Francisco landmarks,If My Friends Could See Me Now; she is wearing a red beret, theTransamerica Pyramid is royal blue, and other buildings are scarlet and violet, withLombard Street embroidered in gold thread.[5]
Abad's characteristictrapunto paintings integrate stitched and stuffed fabric with painting to produce a sculptural effect.[5] She also incorporated materials including cloth, mirrors, beads, shells, and buttons into the surface of her paintings.[11][13] In 1988 she taught classes on trapunto painting and on wearable art at theSmithsonian Institution.[2]
Her series of six trapunto paintings,Masks from Six Continents, hung as a mural at theMetro Center station in Washington, DC, from 1990 to 1993.[2][5] Other series included theCambodian Refugee series (1979–80), a series inspired by peoples of highlandPapua New Guinea (begun in 1982), theAsian Abstractions series of trapunto paintings featuring repeating patterns of rice stalks (begun in 1985),[14]Immigrant Experience (begun in 1994), and a series of depictions of Indonesianwayang puppets that grew to encompass more than 100 paintings and led to a 2000 commission from Kedaung Ceramics for a hand-painted limited-edition dinnerware set.[2] Her final series of large trapunto paintings,Endless Blues, was created and exhibited in Singapore in 2002.[2][15] In addition to theCambodian Refugee andImmigrant Experience series, Abad's political art includedDeath of Ninoy (1983, painted immediately after theassassination of Benigno Aquino Jr), the trapunto paintingMarcos and His Cronies (1985–95),Caught at the Border (1991),Korean Shopkeepers (1992, in response to the1992 Los Angeles riots),Haitians Waiting (1992),L.A. Liberty (1992),Contemplating Flor (1995, in response to the sentencing ofFlor Contemplacion),Filipinas in Hong Kong (1995),The Sky Is Falling, the Sky Is Falling (1998), and in collaboration with New York women artists, three 2001 murals commemorating theSeptember 11 attacks as part of the9/11 Phoenix Project.[2]
A few months before her death in 2004, Abad painted the 55-meter longAlkaff Bridge in Singapore, covering it with 2,350 circles in 55 colors; it is now known as Singapore ArtBridge.[2][16][17]
In 1971, shortly after moving to San Francisco, Abad met and married artist George Kleiman. Though they separated shortly after, Abad credited Kleiman for introducing her to the art world.[3][2]
In 1973, while at a regional World Affairs Conference inMonterey, California, Abad met Jack Garrity, a graduate student in international finance atStanford University.[2][5] After traveling across Asia for a year, the two remained together for the remainder of Abad's life. Garrity's work as a development economist caused them to travel to more than 60 countries.[20]
Abad wasnaturalized as a citizen of the United States in 1994.[2][20]
Abad was diagnosed in late 2001 withlung cancer and died in Singapore on December 7, 2004.[3][2] She is buried in Batanes, next to her home studio.[21]
Since her death, Abad's works have often been displayed in galleries and museums in the Philippines during the annual Philippine Arts Month and other art festivals.[22][23][24]
In 2019, theTate Modern in London exhibited Abad's quilted canvas works "Bacongo III-IV" (1986) and "European Mask" (1990). In the same year, trapunto paintings by Abad were shown atFrieze London.[25]
In 2023, the first major retrospective of Abad's work was held.[2] The exhibition opened at theWalker Art Center inMinneapolis, curated by Jack Garrity,[16][26] and traveled to theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art,[5][2] followed byMoMA PS1 in New York City, and then theArt Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. As of 2024[update], it is the largest museum exhibit in the United States devoted to an Asian American female artist.[27] An exhibition of her works titledColors of My Dream was also presented by the Tina Kim Gallery in New York City in 2023.[28] Works by Abad have since been exhibited in theGuggenheim Abu Dhabi and at the60th Venice Biennale, among others.[29]
On July 31, 2020, Abad was commemorated with aGoogle Doodle.[30][31]
Abad was the first woman to receive theOutstanding Young Men of the Philippines Arts award, in 1984.[12][2][31] In 1990 she won the Washington, DC, Metro Art Award.[2] In 1995 she received the Excellence 2000 Award for the Arts of the US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce.[2] In 2000, in Manila, she received the Pamana ng Pilipino Award for outstanding achievement in the arts.[2]
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