Edades and the 13 Moderns (1948)

Traditional historiography relies on the identification of events with which succeeding events and other historical shifts categorically get associated. The comparative dearth in texts on Philippine modernism, for instance, has made the oft-cited pre-then post-WWII debates between conservatives and modernists a recurrent peg in the telling of stories about modernism in the country. The reproduced clippings making up part of the debate which appears in this section came from the catalogue, Edades and the 13 Moderns curated by the artist-historian Rod Paras-Perez.

Apart from the two main disputants (Guillermo Tolentino and Victorio Edades), the published debates drew input from other thinkers from academic and artistic circles of the period. The primary exchanges saw print in 1936 and again in 1948 between sculptor and art educator of the University of the Philippines Guillermo Tolentino and painter and, later, art educator of the University of Santo Tomas Victorio Edades. Tolentino was awarded the National Artist Award for Sculpture in 1973 and Edades was awarded National Artist for Painting in 1976.