Mystery, Mood, and Contemplation: Romulo Olazo’s Large-Scale Works

BY: CARLOMAR ARCANGEL DAOANA

Excerpts from the Olazo Large-Scale Catalogue

In his artist statement for “Diaphanous B-XXII,” a painting that he bequeathed to the nation through the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), Romulo Olazo has possibly summed up the creative impulse and motivation that undergirds his body of work. “I am continuously concerned with the quality of materials I work on,” he states, “to achieve an overall effect of mystery, mood and contemplation.” Materiality and mystery, method and mood, color and contemplation--in their intersections do his works find their gravitational axis and their elegant consummation. It is an achievement that is in full view in Olazo: Large Scale, the opus posthumous of one of the leading lights of Philippine abstraction.

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