MAKATI — Ayala Museum, in partnership with Avellana Art Gallery and Crucible Gallery, presents the exhibition Graven Images: 1964 -2014, Pandy Aviado, 50 Years of Printmaking, which opens on November 25, 2014 at its Ground Floor Gallery.
This exhibition features a broad array of graphic images from an artistic output in a span of fifty years. Included are 161 prints; over a hundred are from the artist’s personal collection, supplemented with loans from cultural institutions and private lenders. The majority of prints are in the artist’s favored technique of etching, but the exhibition also displays works woodcuts, rubbercuts, lithography, as well as rare prints done by solar etching and epoxy relief.
Graven Images: 1964 – 2014 attempts to group his prints thematically. Like his mentors Manuel Rodriguez Sr. and Araceli Dans, the work of Aviado was never totally abstract but persisted on creating images from history, his personal world, popular culture, and classical myths on stone and copper.
Virgillio “Pandy” Aviado (born 1944) first saw prints as a college student at the Ateneo de Manila University. He was a member of the Ateneo Arts Club and was a frequent visitor at the Ateneo Art Gallery. Aviado remembers memorizing Ateneo’s print collection, which became his first real education in the art of printmaking.
Aviado pursued and perfected his creative and technical skills in printmaking during his college years. He arranged to have sessions at the print workshop of Rodriguez called the Contemporary Graphic Arts Workshop. Aviado first worked on stone lithography, then proceeded to the etching press. He eventually had his own printing press fabricated from spare parts found in a junk shop and set his own studio workshop in his parent’s home. After joining and winning art competitions and doing both solo and group exhibitions, Aviado obtained further training and specialization in etching and lithography in Madrid and Paris.
Aviado is now one of the country’s staunch champions of the graphic medium and the leading practitioner of the art of fine print.
The exhibition is on view until January 11, 2015. For more information, call (632) 759 82 88 or email hello@ayalamuseum.org.
