He finished fine arts at the University of the Philippines in 1936. He was a scholar at the Cultura Hispanica in Madrid in 1953-54 and studied at the Academie Ranson Paris. Among the Thirteen moderns, his canvases were the least decorative. He painted disturbing pictures of anguish such as “Man and Woman” and dramatic tropes of struggle and triumph, such as “The Survivor”. He reconstituted cubism’s unfeeling, geometric ordering of figures into a social expressionism rendered with interacting forms and rhythmic movement. He won First Prize for “Gadgets” from the AAP in 1949. He was awarded the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan by the City of Manila in 1972, were the First Plastic Arts Conference in Rome in 1953, the Sao Paola Biennial in Graphic Arts in 1967 and 1969, and the Wraxall Gallery in London in 1982.
