Martino Abellana

Meet the late grand old man from Cebu, Carcar: artist and professor. Professor Martin Abellana’s life and his love for art. His output reached up to more than 100 works of art since he began to paint after he retired from his profession as a professor in a great University in Manila. His passion has not waned over the years. Creating art is a real test of patience. Abellana invests hundreds of man-hours to produce different winning art. The late Martino went beyond the romantic idyllic scenes popularized by his mentor National Artist Fernando Amorsolo. The younger man ventured into powerful realism based on actual life as in his prize winning “Job Is Also Man” the stark portrait of a starving beggar. Abellana’s art is rare and unique: it glows with respect for nature, in human being and human condition ... ethereal yet enduring. He believes in giving back to the earth whatever one has taken from it.

Winner of different awards from different places, Martino considered the greatest of Cebu’s portrait painters of the third generation of Cebu’s old masters in sculpture and painting although very few welcomed portraiture painting here. Unfazed, Abellana went ahead anyway, and set examples of how they might exploit the expression using Charcoal, pastels and oil. Born in a family who loves art either in embroidery, music and painting. Martino “Tinong” Abellana is considered a phenomenon in the painting industry.

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