DEC13_SUPERDUPERFINAL

Nunelucio Alvarado
Untitled 45.5” x 101” acrylic on canvas
Nunelucio Alvarado (b. 1950, Sagay City) finished his bachelor’s
degree in Advertising at the La Consolacion College School of
Architecture and Fine Arts in Bacolod City in 1968 and went to
Manila to pursue Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines
the following year as a scholar of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma. While in
Manila he became an active member of the activist organization
Nagkakaisang Progresibong Arkitekto at Artista (NPAA) and
became Chairperson of the organization’s Western Visayas chapter
soon after. After the declaration of Martial Law, he was drawn
to Kaisahan, a group of painters that cultivated a strong political
and social orientation. He returned to Bacolod in 1979 and cofounded
the collective Pamilya Pintura in 1980. In Bacolod, he
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became president of the Art Association of Bacolod and was one of
the founding members of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines-
Negros when it was established in 1983. He joined the artist
collective Black Artists of Asia in 1987.
In Alvarado’s paintings, as critic Alice Guillermo describes them,
we see “not a land of sweetness and light as Amorsolo evoked [but
a] Bacolod fraught with dark shadows and sinister presences against
passages of blazing light in a harsh landscape.” He received the 13
Artists grant from the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1992
and was part of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary
Art in Brisbane in 1993.