Pacita Abad

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Pacita Abad

Pacita Abad (1946-2004) was a Philippino artist. She was born in Basco, Batanes, a small island in the northernmost part of the Philippines, between Luzon and Taiwan. Her painting career began when she journeyed to the United States to undertake graduate studies. She studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Art Students League of New York, and then started to “paint the globe”, living on 5 different continents and working in more than 80 countries. Her travels to destinations like Guatemala, Mexico, India, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Mali, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Indonesia had a major impact on her life and art, and were the inspiration for many ideas, techniques and materials in her paintings.

Abad’s painting is characterized by constant change, experimentation and development from the 1970’s, right up until her passing. Her early paintings were primarily figurative socio-political works of people and primitive masks. Another series was large scale paintings of underwater scenes, tropical flowers and animal wildlife. Pacita’s most extensive body of work, however, is her vibrantly, colorful abstract work - many very large scale canvases, but also a number of small collages - on a complete range of materials from canvas and paper to bark cloth, metal, ceramics and glass. A disciplined and prolific painter, Pacita created over 5,000 artworks and even painted a 55-meter long Alkaff Bridge in Singapore and covered it with 2,350 multicolored circles.

She developed trapunto painting, a technique of stitching and stuffing her painted canvases to give them a three-dimensional sculptural effect. She then began transforming the surface of her paintings with materials, such as traditional cloth, mirrors, beads, shells, plastic buttons and other objects, which she synthesized with bold colors.

Abad had over 40 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. She also participated in more than 50 group and traveling exhibitions throughout the world. Pacita’s work is now in public, corporate and private art collections in over 70 countries.

[edit] References

Pacita Abad: A painted passing, Roel Hoang Manipon
Pacita Abad; M Teresa Lapid Rodriguez; Montclair State University Art Galleries. Palay (rice) : Trapunto murals by Pacita Abad (Upper Montclair, N.J. : Montclair State University Art Galleries, 2001) OCLC 48787832
"Pacita Abad: Exploring the Spirit", Text by Ian Findlay-Brown (Hardcover, 1996), ISBN 979950290X, ISBN 9789799502902 (books are available at www.amazon.com)
"Pacita Abad: Abstract Emotions", Text by Alice Guillermo (Hardcover, 1998), ISBN 978-9799542403
"Pacita Abad: Door to Life", Text by James T. Bennett (Hardcover, 1999), ISBN 978-9799502919
"Pacita Abad: The Sky is the Limit", Text by Tay Swee Lin (Hardcover, 2001), ISBN 978-9810434076
"Pacita Abad: Endless Blues", Text by Ian Findlay-Brown (Hardcover, 2002), ISBN 978-9810471286
"Pacita Abad: Circles in My Mind", Text by Cid Reyes (Hardcover, 2003), ISBN 978-9810494186
"Pacita Abad: Obsession", Text by Ian Findlay-Brown and Ruben Defeo (Hardcover, 2004), ISBN 978-9810515492
"Pacita's Painted Bridge", Text by Jack Garrity (Hardcover, 2004)
"A Passion to Paint: The Colorful World of Pacita Abad", Text by Jack Garrity (Paperback, 2004)