When the Urban Roamer got the opportunity to visit the Philamlife Building at Ermita during its (sob) final days, one of the things I was fixated upon was the artworks whose artist was a mystery to me at that time. Thanks to a reader, I found out that those artworks were actually done by Vicente Manansala himself, National Artist for Visual Arts alongside with colleagues like Fernando Amorsolo and Botong Francisco.
The paintings are a a series of 7 commissioned works completed by Manansala in 1961, the same year the Philamlife Building was completed, done in the cubist style Manansala was known for.
While the issue about the fate of the Philamlife Auditorium was in full rage for several months last year, curiously there was not much news about what was to happen to those paintings considering these were done by a National Artist.
That question was answered with a satisfying resolution today as the National Museum of the Philippines announced over its Facebook page that these 7 paintings can now be seen in one of the halls of the 3rd floor of the museum’s National Art Gallery named aptly, “Philam Life Hall.”
