Page 64 - The Pioneers, November 26, 2016 Hong Kong

...In Joya, the power of abstraction, which is either only potential or false in others, becomes an actuality.
And his abstraction is total and absolute: his pictures are not of the things of this world. Saint Augustine
says very finely of Love that it calls us to the things of this world. In this world of Joya there is a lot of
Love and it is the Love that calls us to the things of this world.

- Francisco Arcellana, January 13, 1961

Highly revered and regarded with great acclaim, Around his time in the US, he was exposed to abstract
José Joya is widely considered as one of the most expressionist luminary artists such as Jackson Pollock
accomplished modern abstractionists from the and Willem de Kooning amongst others at the height
Philippines, with his gestural, Oriental-influenced of the abstract expressionism movement in New York.
compositions merging the best of Western and “He is the first Filipino painter to be linked to abstract
Eastern art traditions. Joya was born in 1931 and even expressionism or action painting of the New York
in his youth, displayed a strong aptitude for drawing School… used to the rigid disciplines of his classically-
and art. Among his numerous accolades, Joya won oriented mentors at the University of the Philippines,
several prestigious art prizes and scholarships which Jose Joya found himself in America in 1956 and 1957.
funded exchange programs in Europe, including a Suddenly he was bursting out of the patterns which
one year grant to study painting in Madrid from the thick spatterings and spatulates of colour and pigment,
Spanish government's Instituto de Cultura Hispanica. under the heady inspiration of the American action
Fernando Zóbel, himself a formidable abstract artist painters, who themselves were peaking morphologically
now resident in Spain, was pivotal in influencing the during that period.” (Leo Benesa, What is Philippine
travel-study grants to Madrid awarded to Joya and about Philippine Art? 1995)
other young Philippine artists during the 1950s, such
as Arturo Luz, Nena Saguil and Larry Tronco. Most The movement's interpretation of non-figurative works
significantly, Joya won a Fulbright-Smith Mundt inspired and influenced him, but to be differentiated
scholarship which allowed him to embark upon and not typecast as a mere copycat, Joya appropriated
his master's degree at the Cranbrook Academy in the style but inserted his own stylistic techniques,
Michigan, which Anita Magsaysay-Ho had attended imbuing his works with dynamism, vitality and energy,
before him. Like Magsaysay-Ho, the period which Joya characterized by a deep sense of spirituality. Whilst
spent in America proved to be foundational for his Joya's immense variety of abstract art is undoubted, all
development in abstract expression. his works convey yet a sense of restraint and balance.

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