Works on Paper / 1968: Marciano Galang

During the 1960’s, Marciano Galang (1945-2001), a Cabusao, Camarines Sur-born artist, started his art practice in a time wherein artists were in transition to different forms of media. A grantee of the MM Castro Scholarship program, Galang attended the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts from 1962 to 1966, earning him a BFA degree. Since his first solo exhibition in Gallery Indigo in 1967, Galang has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions both here and abroad.

Galang emerged as one of the most adept artists in mixed media. At nineteen, Galang’s entry entitled Cavite earned him a certificate of merit in the Shell National Students Art Competition. It was this mixed media artwork that highlighted Galang’s fascination with found objects and his ability to see beyond the mundanity of common everyday objects.

Galang was included in the first batch of artists to be recognized as one of the Thirteen Artists by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. An initiative of Roberto Chabet to recognize “thirteen of the country’s most most active, most aggressively ambitious talents... a new generation of painters, sculptors, and printmakers that promises to dominate Philippine art of seventies” (Chabet n.p.), an exhibition was held in the Main Gallery of CCP from June 15 to July 31, 1970, where Galang’s works entitled No Time For Love and I’ll Never Let You Go, both a lacquer on wood mural, were placed side-by-side his contemporaries and co-awardees: Raymundo Albano, Antonio Austria, Virgilio Aviado, BenCab, Jaime De Guzman, and Manuel Rodriguez Jr, amongst others.

Notes by Ateneo Art Gallery