Ocampo garnered several distinctions-awards from the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) citations from the City of Manila and the first Republic Cultural Award in Painting in 1965.
The artist considered this work as “the full flowering” of his singular abstract style that seeks to capture the Filipino spirit.ĭuring his lifetime, H.R. The 1969 painting, Genesis, was enlarged into a grand tapestry in the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ main theater and hangs to this day. From modernism, his work developed into pure abstraction or non-objectivism, with bold colors often described as lyrical and organic by his contemporaries. These artists re-grouped with additional members into the Neo-Realists in the postwar period. Ocampo is one of the original Thirteen Moderns group formed in 1938. Ocampo also founded the Saturday Group, an informal artist collective which endured for several years after his death.
Ocampo became a creative and mass media writer, editor, producer, actor, and above all, painter who was lauded by his intellectual peers. His father wanted him to be a lawyer and politician. Hernando Ruiz Ocampo (1911 – 1978) was born in Manila.
