Featured Tsinoy

Ang Kiukok was proclaimed National Artist for Visual Arts in 2001, the highest accolade bestowed upon a Filipino artist, a master of contemporary art. He was known and appreciated for his figurative expressionistic style. Although not a vocal critic of the Martial Law regime, his visual representations of people living in squalor, contorted scenes of cruelty, and domestic animals such as rabid dogs and frenzied roosters in violent stances were protest enough.

He painted the world as honestly as he saw it: grim and ghastly. Throughout his years of painting, he maintained the intensity and stamina of a great artist dedicated to his craft.

He drew and painted everyday, comfortably shifting mediums: oil, watercolor, acrylic, ink and gouache. He once revealed that he sometimes worked on six to eight paintings at the same time. "It is not a pretty world," the painter said. Human life is riddled with pain and privation. Ang Kiukok rendered this truth in his works, all sublime and transcendental.

Ang Kiukok was born on March 1, 1931 to impoverished immigrant Chinese parents, Ang Sy Pong and Chin Lim. At the time he was born, Ang's father, as testament of his nationalism, named him Wah Shing, meaning "Chinese born." When it was later on found out that an elder cousin was similarly named, the baby boy was given a new one, Kiu Kok, meaning "Save the Nation."