National Artist for Visual Arts (1991)
(April 28, 1911 – December 28, 1978)
Hernando Ocampo, or HR Ocampo as is widely recognized, is part of the Thirteen Moderns and one of the six core group of the Neo-Realists. Ocampo embraced abstraction in its most basic form: preferring the elements of art (shape, hues, values, textures and lines), rejecting the figurative and creating an entirely different work far away from nature. He wanted to capture “new realities in terms of strain and stress” instead of emotions. Ocampo’s non-objective paintings, which he named “visual-melodies”, is painted by putting pigment to assigned color codes in the different sections of the canvas, much like the modern-day paint by number activity. Ocampo’s art is independent from nature but holds its own weight by the design principles the artist stands by: “unity, coherence and emphasis in dynamic equilibrium”.