Pacita Abad

Pacita Barsana Abad (October 5, 1946 – December 7, 2004) was a Filipino-born American Ivatan self-taught^[1] visual artist. Her more than 30-year painting career began when she traveled to the United States to undertake graduate studies in Spain. She exhibited her work in over 200 museums, galleries and other venues, including 75 solo shows, around the world. Abad's work is now in public, corporate and private art collections in over 70 countries.

Pacita Barsana Abad was born in Basco, Batanes, on October 5, 1946.^[2] She was the fifth of thirteen children.^[2]

From 1949 to 1972, her father, Jorge Abad, represented the lone district of Batanes for a total of five nonconsecutive terms in the Congress of the Philippines. Her mother, Aurora Abad, served for one term (1966 to 1969) in the same elected position after Jorge Abad was appointed secretary of public works and highways by President Diosdado Macapagal. The Abad family moved from Batanes to Manila at the end of Jorge Abad's first term.^[3]

In Manila, Pacita Abad attended Legarda Elementary School and Ramon Magsaysay High School.

She graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1968. The following year, she began graduate studies in law at the same institution.^[3] During that time, she also began organizing student demonstrations protesting brutal tactics employed in the 1969 Philippine general election, including those used in Batanes, where her father was running for another term. Following a demonstration near Malacañang, Abad and several of her fellow student demonstrators met with President Ferdinand Marcos, drawing national media attention to their protest.^[4]

The Abad family home in Manila soon became a target of violence, including once being shot at. Although nobody was harmed, following the incident, Abad was encouraged by her parents to leave the country and continue her law studies in Spain. In 1970, on the way to Europe, she visited an aunt in San Francisco and decided to stay in the United States instead.^[3]

While working as a secretary during the day and as a seamstress at night, Abad started a graduate program in Asian history at Lone Mountain College. In 1973 she completed a thesis called The Role of Emilio Aguinaldo in the Acquisition of the Philippines by the United States from Spain: 1898.^[5] After receiving her master's degree in 1973, she was offered a scholarship to attend the Boalt Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. However, Abad deferred her enrollment after meeting Stanford University graduate student Jack Garrity. The two traveled across Asia for a year, including a two-month stay in the Philippines. Upon returning to California, Abad relinquished her law school scholarship and took up painting.^[3]

Abad and Garrity later moved to Washington, D.C. and then to New York City, where Abad took up formal painting classes at the Corcoran School of Art and the Art Students League of New York.^[6] At the Art Students League, Abad studied still life and figurative art under John Heliker and Robert Beverly Hale.^[3]

From 1978 to 1980, Abad traveled with Garrity as his work brought him to Bangladesh, Sudan, and Thailand.^[4] During their travels, Abad learned about Indigenous art techniques and traditions, as well as visiting refugee camps, the experiences later informing her work as an artist.^[3]

In Thailand, her attention was drawn to the refugee crisis along the Cambodia–Thailand border following the outbreak of the Cambodian-Vietnamese War. During several trips to the refugee camps at the border assisting in relief work, she spent time with the refugees, journalists, and relief administrators, and began to draw sketches and take photographs. Towards the end of 1979, Abad was painting based on the material she gathered and, by April 1980, she exhibited the 24-painting series Portraits of Kampuchea, also known as the Cambodian Refugee series, at the Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art in Bangkok.^[7] Abad's exhibit didn't include one of her most notable works, Flight to Freedom (1980),^[8] as she was still in the process of completing it.^[3]

From 1980 to 1982, Abad lived in Boston while Garrity attended a two-year graduate program at Boston University. She started her Masks and Spirits series in 1981 with her first trapunto painting.^[3]

In 1982, the couple moved to Manila, where Garrity worked for the Asian Development Bank. Abad held two major solo exhibits in her home country: in 1984, Pacita Abad: A Philippine Painter Looks at the World, curated by Arturo Luz, at the Museum of Philippine Art; and in 1985, Pacita Abad: Paintings of People and Landscapes of Batanes, curated by Ray Albano, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.^[3]

Abad received The Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines Arts award in 1984,^[9] becoming the first woman ever to receive the award.^[10]

In 1986, Abad and Garrity moved back to Washington, D.C. for the latter's work at the World Bank.^[3]

In 1971, after Abad first moved to San Francisco, she met and married artist George Kleiman. Though they separated shortly after, Abad credited Kleiman for introducing her to the art world.^[3][11]

In 1973, while at a regional World Affairs Conference in Monterey, California, Abad met Jack Garrity, a graduate student at Stanford studying international finance.^[11] The two decided to travel across Asia for a year together. They remained together upon returning to the United States.^[3] Later on, Garrity's work as a development economist brought the couple to travel to over 60 countries.^[12]

Abad was naturalized as a citizen of the United States in 1994.^[12]

Abad's early paintings were primarily figurative socio-political works of people and primitive masks. She did a series of large-scale paintings of underwater scenes, tropical flowers, and animal wildlife. Abad's most extensive body of work, however, is her colorful abstract work, made up of many large-scale canvases and a number of small collages, on a range of materials from canvas and paper to barkcloth, metal, ceramic, and glass. Abad created over 4,500 artworks.^[9] She painted the 55-meter long Alkaff Bridge in Singapore, covering it with 2,350 multicolored circles, a few months before she died.^[13]

Abad developed a technique called trapunto painting (named after a quilting technique), which entailed stitching and stuffing her painted canvases to give them a three-dimensional, sculptural effect. She then began incorporating materials such as cloth, mirrors, beads, shells, and buttons into the surface of her paintings.^[14][15]

Her 1985 lost artwork, an expressionist oil painting called “Sapuno” (from the Batanes series), was part of Abad's 1985 Cultural Center of the Philippines exhibit, “Paintings of People and Landscapes of Batanes”. It resurfaced in the collection of an anonymous owner.^[14]

After a three-year battle with lung cancer, Abad died in Singapore on December 7, 2004.^[3] She is buried in Batanes, next to her home studio.^[16]

Abad's works have been displayed often in galleries and museums in the Philippines during the annual Philippine Arts Month and other art festivals.^[17][18][19]

In 2019, the Tate Modern exhibited Abad's quilted canvas works "Bacongo III-IV" (1986) and "European Mask" (1990). In the same year, Abad's trapunto quilting paintings were shown in Frieze London.^[20]

In 2023, the first major retrospective of Abad's work was held.^[11] The exhibition opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, curated by Jack Garrity,^[21] and traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,^[11] followed by MoMA PS1 in New York, and then the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. As of 2024, it is largest museum exhibit in the United States devoted to an Asian American female artist.^[22]

Her works were exhibited in the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and at the 60th Venice Biennale, among others.^[23]

On July 31, 2020, Abad was commemorated with a Google Doodle.^[24]

• Shaped canvas
• Filipino women artists
• Arts in the Philippines

• Abad, Pacita; Lapid Rodriguez, M Teresa (2001). Palay (rice) : Trapunto murals by Pacita Abad. Upper Montclair, N.J.: Montclair State University Art Galleries. OCLC 48787832.
• Findlay-Brown, Ian (1996). Pacita Abad: Exploring the Spirit. National Gallery of Indonesia. ISBN 978-979-95029-0-2.
• Abad, Pacita (1998). Alice Guillermo (ed.). Abstract Emotions. Museum Nasional (Indonesia). ISBN 978-979-95424-0-3.
• Abad, Pacita (1999). James T. Bennett (ed.). Pacita Abad: Door to Life. Pacita Abad. ISBN 978-979-95029-1-9.
• Abad, Pacita (2001). Lin, Tay Swee (ed.). Pacita Abad: The Sky is the Limit. Pacita Abad. ISBN 978-981-04-3407-6.
• Abad, Pacita; Findlay-Brown, Ian (2002). Pacita Abad: Endless Blues. National Gallery of Indonesia. ISBN 978-981-04-7128-6.
• Abad, Pacita (2003). Cid Reyes (ed.). Pacita Abad: Circles in My Mind. Singapore Tyler Print Institute. ISBN 978-981-04-9418-6.
• Abad, Pacita (2004). Ian Findlay-Brown; Ruben Defeo (eds.). Obsession. Pacita Abad. ISBN 978-981-05-1549-2.
• Abad, Pacita (2004). Jack Garrity; Michael Liew (eds.). Pacita's Painted Bridge. Pacita Abad. ISBN 978-981-05-1020-6.

• Brooklyn Museum's Feminist Art Base profile
• Artsy page
• Official website
• AWARE profile
• "Pacita Abad: In Singapore" on Vimeo
• Pacita Abad Art Estate / Interview with Jack Garrity by Yale University Radio
• Artnet page