Ang Kiukok

Ang Kiukok (1931–2005) was named National Artist for Visual Arts in 2001. Born in Davao City to Chinese immigrants Vicente Ang and Chin Lim, who had come from Fujian, he was given a name meaning “save the country,” a reference to the conflicts then engulfing China. He learned charcoal portraiture in 1947 and studied at the University of Santo Tomas from 1952 to 1954, leaving before finishing for lack of money. He was mentored there by Vicente Manansala, and also studied under Victorio Edades and Diosdado Lorenzo.

His first one-man show came in 1954, at twenty-three, at the Contemporary Arts Gallery, and consisted of more than twenty watercolors. A 1965 trip to New York with Manansala marked a turn in his work toward the expressionism he became known for.

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Ang fused cubism, surrealism and expressionism into a style of his own, often called figurative expressionism. His recurring subjects, fighting cocks, snarling dogs, screaming heads and crucifixions, carry an unusual violence, and his mature work reads as a sustained account of anguish under mechanization and political turbulence. He died of cancer in Quezon City on 9 May 2005, aged 74.