Cebuano Artists Painting Collection - Edgar B. Mojares

Edgar B. Mojares was a Cebu-based artist who studied art at Cebu's UPCC Fine Arts Program in 1975. Born to public school teachers from Polanco, Zamboanga del Norte, he is the brother of National Artist in Literature, Resil B. Mojares.

The late Mojares was a reclusive painter who had several group art exhibits but never had a one man show. The online exhibit at CAI gallery was his first. His works spans fifteen years, roughly running between the late 70s to early 90s.

Pencil sketch, 1990

He is well regarded as the leading proponent of Cebuano synthetic collage cubism in the 70's with Tito Cuevas in abstract expressionism. These two turned down pecuniary gains to lead Cebu to novel art forms which were not well received during their time, as buyers and collectors where more inclined to buy realist paintings. Radel Paredes aptly stated, "the late Mojares took up Picasso's collage but used basket weave, coco fiber and other organic materials more telling of local texture".

 

Mojares and cubist Celso Pepito were contemporaries at the UP Cebu Fine Arts program in the 70's. It was him and  Wenceslao "Tito" Cuevas who prodded Pepito to try something different, inspiring him to paint in the cubistic style.

Any material,  Mojares' works on, as he constantly experiments, invents and sometimes exploits indigenous raw materials at the expense of a possible obsolescence. Even in the pen & ink drawings he infuses an unconventional method, and so with his painting techniques, the prints, collages and other innovative works.

Although respecting the formalism and painterly tradition of his mentor Martino Abellana, he held on to the belief that art's vitality rests on the persistence of one's introspective tendencies with uncompromising creative visual attitude.

For the artist, the experience is a perpetual open horizon where the idea of art exist only because of its intellectual challenge or some other transcendent content.

  Resil's Typewriter, Watercolor, 1981