Art critic Alice Guillermo passes away

Alice Guillermo, an art critic and a former Art Studies department chairperson at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, passed away on Sunday morning after a long illness, her son Dr. Bomen Guillermo confirmed to GMA News Online.

She was 80 years old.

A prolific writer, Alice started writing art critiques in 1972 and regularly wrote articles for a number of publications, among them Asian Art News, World Sculpture News, Philippines Graphic, Observer Magazine of Times Journal, and Today newspaper.

She also wrote many books, among them "Image to Meaning: Essays on Philippine Art" and "Protest/Revolutionary Art in the Philippines 1970-1990."

She received the Art Criticism Award of the Art Association of the Philippines in 1976 and was named Centennial Honoree for the Arts (for Art Criticism) in 1999 by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Alice graduated magna cum laude from the College of the Holy Spirit with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a Bachelor of Science in Education.

She finished her master's degree in Comparative Literature at UP Diliman.

Alice also studied art at the Universite d'Aix-Marseille on a scholarship from the French government.

She also worked on the CCP Encyclopedia, won a Palanca award for essay in 1979, and was a recipient of a Japan Foundation grant.

In an interview for The Art Manila Newspaper in 2002 with this writer, Alice said that for art critics, "it's important to have a general background of the arts, of the history of art. And they must also research on the materials and techniques of the artist because that's all part of art criticism. We talk not only about finished works but also about works in process, how they're made."

"And then it's also necessary for Filipino art critics to have a background of Philippine history and Philippine art in general. Art criticism is an interdisciplinary thing. When one becomes an art critic, one doesn't just focus on art alone. It looks like a confined discipline but it's a kind of concentric thing, it moves outward toward social and historical concerns," she continued.

In May 2018, Alice's friends held a fundraising event that included an online art auction, an art raffle, and a lugawan at the UP College of Fine Arts Auditorium to help with her medical bills.

Alice and her husband, poet and essayist Gelacio Guillermo, have two children. — BM, GMA News