Born in Davao City to Chinese immigrants, Ang Kiukok was christened with a bright, shiny, and optimistic name which, in English, meant ‘Save the Country.’ When he was 21, he would come to Manila and enroll in the University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture and Fine Arts where he would meet his life-long mentor and friend, Vicente Manansala.
\nThere was always something high-minded and yes, visionary, about him: An astonishing entry in his biography details that in 1956, he “stayed in Sulu for five years to teach art to children of Chinese descent.” He would, however, come to Manila and forge bonds and mount exhibits at the legendary Philippine Art Gallery, the country’s first outpost for abstract art.
\nIn 1976, his biography further notes, he “appeared on the cover of Asiaweek Magazine, with a cover story that described him as a mild-mannered expressionist — “tall, angular, reticent” — living in Quezon City with his wife, four children, three dogs and flowering plants.” Many of these motifs, the mothers cradling babies, energetic dogs, prickly plants and yes, the open windows of an urban home would find themselves into his paintings.
\nThis particular “Mother and Child” would find its way into the Ford Foundation collection and from thence would be given as a present to one of its foremost officers in the Philippines, Mr. Arthur Hill. The tri-color of the Philippine flag — and the American — make it an even more appealing depiction of a mother and child, intertwined in a close embrace.
\nArt critic Carlomar Daoana would put it this way, “While his contemporaries interpreted Cubism in a lyrical style through an evocative overlapping of shapes and colors, the master brought it to an acutely sharp level, injecting it with a masculine energy. In breaking the subject matter into planar and geometric shapes, Ang Kiukok not so much simplified as he compressed, giving his subjects visual dominance and existential gravitas.”
\nThe Ford Foundation made its first grants to the Philippines between 1960 and 1961 as part of its activities in South and Southeast Asia. It then established an office in Manila in 1962. The Manila office was responsible for administering the Foundation’s programming for that country. Throughout the course of the Manila office’s history, the Foundation’s programming for the Philippines focused on projects and initiatives involved with agriculture, water management, forestry, arts, business management and industrial development, population, science education, public administration, language studies, women’s rights, sexuality and reproductive health, poverty reduction, and human rights.
\nMuch of the Foundation’s early support to the Philippines centered on strengthening the University of the Philippines so that the institution could provide graduate training and research for the country’s economic development. By 1967, the Foundation had issued several millions of dollars in grants to the university.
\nSerendipitously, this splendid Ang Kiukok will once again be focused on raising money for the underprivileged youth from across the country who can surmount the university’s rigorous entrance exams but do not have the wherewithal to live on campus.
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