In Focus: Fernando Zobel de Ayala y Montojo

Fernando Zóbel de Ayala y Montojo (August 27, 1924 – June 2, 1984), also known as Fernando Zóbel y Montojo, Fernando M. Zóbel and sometimes as Fernando M. Zóbel de Ayala, was a Spanish–Filipino Non-objective modernist painter, businessman, and patron of the arts.

He was born in Ermita, Manila in the Philippines. He was the son of Enrique Zobel (1877–1943) and Fermina Montojo y Torrontegui and was a member of the prominent Ayala family. Zobel took up medical studies at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. Later on, Zobel in 1942 had spinal deficiency that forced him to him bedridden that year. Zobel to past the time sketched of anything that caught his eye. He finished studying in Santo Tomas and left for Harvard University in 1946 to take up degrees in history and literature.

Zobel started painting without formal training while in Harvard. He graduated in 1949 as magna cum laude. He later stayed on as biographical researcher after finishing his bachelor's degree. It was at this time, he met American artists Hyman Bloom, Reed Champion and Jim Pfeufer who helped him launch his career as an artist. His paintings were in style of the Boston artists and are considered his Boston-style works.

He returned to the Philippines and became friends with contemporary Filipino modernist artists. As such, he collected modernist works and set up exhibits for them to be shown and noticed since modernist art was largely unappreciated. In 1954, he left Manila and enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design where he saw an exhibition by Mark Rothko. Rothko's paintings made an impression on Zobel later to be done in his later works. When he returned to Manila, Zobel started in having interest in Chinese and Japanese art and took up calligraphy classes until 1960. During this time, he joined the faculty of the Ateneo de Manila University and later was given an honorary doctorate and was made honorary director of the Ateneo Art Gallery for his contribution in education and as patron of the arts. To make a name for himself as a full-time painter, he later resigned from his position in the Ayala Corporation and move to Spain.

Zobel is best known for his first artwork series called the Saetas. Named after the liturgical song sung in Holy Week in Spain, they were developed for the most part in the Philippines. Zobel faced the technical problem of how to achieve the lines that his theme required, lines that were, in his own words, "long, fine, and controlled." The surgical syringe was the solution which was his trademark in painting. The Saetas were Zobel's first artworks incorporating colors he saw in Rothko's works. After the Saetas, Zobel started painting his concept on black as a color in a series called Serie Negra or Series in Black influenced by East Asian calligraphy. The Serie Negra was started in 1959 while he was in Madrid which were done after four years.

After his first two definitive art series, Zobel began painting landscapes inspired by the river Júcar. In his later years, Zobel created the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español at Casa Colgadas in the town of Cuenca, Spain in 1963. Zobel was a tutor and helped in the careers of Spanish painters some of which were Antonio Lorenzo, Eusebio Sempere, Martín Chirino López, Antonio Saura and many others. Until his death, Zobel was working on a series called Dialogos which was reactions to art masters which he saw in the museums around Europe. In 1983, King Juan Carlos of Spain bestowed upon Zobel the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes. Fernando Zobel died of a heart attack in Rome, Italy on June 2, 1984.

In 2003, a retrospective traveling exhibit in honor of Zobel were held in Cuenca and Seville. On May 21, 2006, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo awarded posthumously him, the Presidential Medal of Merit for his contributions in the arts. On May 24, 2008, Zobel's work titled Noche Clara was sold at Christie's in Hong Kong for PHP 6,000,000, making it the most expensive Philippine artwork.

On Dec.19, 2010 a train station in Cuenca, Spain was inaugurated and named after hispano-Filipino artist Fernando Zobel.

Website: Fernando Zobel. Com

Harvard Magazine: Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Brief life of a peripatetic man of arts,1924-1984

Source: Wikipedia

Asian - Latin Americans

Filipino-Mexican-American singer Jasmine Villegas

Asian Latin Americans are Latin Americans of East Asian,Southeast Asian, South Asian descent. Asian Latin Americans have a centuries-long history in the region, starting with Filipinos in the 16th century. The heyday of Asian immigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, however. There are currently more than four million Asian Latin Americans, nearly 1% of Latin America's population. Chinese and Japanese are the group's largest ancestries; other major ones include Filipinos and Koreans. Brazil is home to the largest population of Asian Latin Americans, at some 1.5 million.The highest ratio of any country in the region is 5%, in Peru. There has been notable emigration from these communities in recent decades, so that there are now hundreds of thousands of people of Asian Latin American origin in both Japan and the United States.

History

The first Asian Latin Americans were Filipinos who made their way to Latin America (particularly Mexico) in the 16th century, as sailors, crews, prisoners, slaves, adventurers and soldiers during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. For two and a half centuries (between 1565 and 1815) many Filipinos sailed on the Manila-Acapulco Galleons, assisting in the Spanish Empire's monopoly in trade. Some of these sailors never returned to the Philippines, and many of their descendants can be found in small communities around Baja California, Sonora, Mexico City, and others. In the 19th century, several thousand Indian labourers of Tamil descent from the Indian French colonial settlements of Madras, Pondichéry, Chandernagor and Karikal where brought to French Guiana, Guadeloupe & Martinique to work in plantations.

Most Asians, however, arrived in the 19th and 20th century as contract workers or economic migrants. Today, the overwhelming majority of Asian Latin Americans are of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent. Japanese migration mostly came to a halt after World War II (with the exception of Japanese settlement in the Dominican Republic), while Korean migration mostly came to an end by the 1980s (though it still continues in Guatemala) and Chinese migration remains ongoing in a number of countries.

Settlement of war refugees has been extremely minor: a few dozen ex-North Korean soldiers went to Argentina and Chile after the Korean War, and some Hmong went to French Guiana (which may or may not be considered part of Latin America depending on the definition) after the Vietnam War.

Geographic Distribution

Four and a half million Latin Americans (almost 1% of the total population of Latin America) are of Asian descent. The number may be millions higher, even more so if all who have partial ancestry are included. For example, Asian Peruvians are estimated at 5% of the population there, but one source places the number of all Peruvians with at least some Chinese ancestry at 4.2 million, which equates to 15% of the country's total population.

Most who are of Japanese descent reside in Brazil, Peru and Argentina, while significant populations of Chinese ancestry are found in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Costa Rica (where they make up about 1% of the total population). Nicaragua is home to 12,000 ethnic Chinese; the majority reside in Managua and on the Caribbean coast. Smaller communities of Chinese, numbering just in the hundreds or thousands, are also found in Colombia, Ecuador and various other Latin American countries. The largest Korean communities are in Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Mexico and Argentina. There are around 10,000 living in Guatemala. There is also a Hmong community in Argentina. The French Overseas Departments of French Guiana, Guadeloupe & Martinique have large populations of people of Tamil Indian descent. Chile, Panama and Venezuela also have small Asian Indian communities.

Japanese Peruvians have a considerable economic position in Peru. Many past and present Peruvian Cabinet members are ethnic Asians and former president Alberto Fujimori is of Japanese ancestry. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community outside of Japan, numbering about 1.5 million.

Emigrant communities

• Canada - Canada has been a destination for Asian Latin American emigration. The immigrants usually settle in the largest cities, such as Vancouver and Toronto, and integrate into the overall Asian Canadian communities.
• Japan - Japanese Brazilian immigrants to Japan numbered 250,000 in 2004, constituting Japan's second-largest immigrant population. Their experiences bear similarities to those of Japanese Peruvian immigrants, who are often relegated to low income jobs typically occupied by foreigners and, as with other immigrants, are vulnerable to the Yakuza. 
• United States - Most Asian Latin Americans who have migrated to the United States live in the largest cities, often in Asian American or Hispanic and Latino communities in the Greater Los Angeles area, New York metropolitan area, Chicago metropolitan area, San Francisco Bay area, Greater Houston, the San Diego area, Imperial Valley, California, Dallas-Fort Worth, and South Florida (mainly Chinese Cubans). They and their descendants are sometimes known as Asian Hispanics and Asian Latinos. In the 2000 US Census, 119,829 Hispanic or Latino Americans identified as being of Asian race alone. In 2006 the Census Bureau's American Community Survey estimated them at 154,694, while its Population Estimates, which are official, put them at 277,704. Some notable Americans of Asian Hispanic/Latino heritage include Franklin Chang-Diaz, Carlos Galvan, Kelis, and Chino Moreno.

Asian Latin American population (incomplete data)

Country	Chinese	Indian	Japanese	Korean	Filipino	Others	References
Argentina	130,000	1,600	35,000	22,024	15,000
Bolivia			12,000	640
Brazil	151,649	1,900	1,405,685	48,419	1,000
Chile		650	10,000	2,249
Colombia		20	1,119	710
Costa Rica	7,873	16		730
Cuba	113,828		1,300
Dominican Republic	50,000		3,000	518
Ecuador		5		1418
El Salvador				272
Guatemala		2,000	288	9,921
Honduras				406
Mexico	31,000	400	35,000	12,072	200,000
Nicaragua				531
Panama	200,000	2,164	456	306
Paraguay			10,321	5,229
Peru	1,300,000	145	90,000	812
Puerto Rico	2200>
Uruguay		~100	456	152
Venezuela		680	828	325

Source: Wikipedia

Tamara Quiogue Mapua: A Filipina Cast Of "HAIR" The Musical In Spain

A Filipino is part of the cast of Hair. Her name is Tamara Quiogue Mapua.

Participates in numerous works of musical theater with the Company Repertory Philippines: Grease, Stop the World! I want to get off, The Fiddler on theRoof, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor dreamcoat, Little Shop of Horrors, Play itAgain, Sam! Les Miserables, My Fair Lady, Into the Woods, among other. InBarcelona with the Little Company The Musical, Rodgers and participates in play at Off Broadway.

In Manila, many stars in both television commercials and radio. Spoke several times in a children's TV show 5 and Up! In the present work with Casa Asia giving workshops at filipino cultural outreach programs and as narrator of legends and fairy tales.

WWW.HAIRELMUSICAL.ES