Mario VA Parial: Beyond Reality

Over a hundred works of Mario VA Parial comprise the artist’s retrospective exhibition at the Bulwagan ng Dangal in UP Diliman, Quezon City, from February 17 to March 31, 2015.

Organized by the University Theater Complex in celebration of UP Diliman Month and National Arts Month, the retrospective is entitled Mario VA Parial: Beyond Reality. The exhibit presents more than four decades of his love affair with painting, printmaking and photography. Prof. Rubén D.F. Defeo, exhibition curator, sums it up: “In Parial’s mind and hands, photography, printmaking and painting come together as a glorious triumvirate.”

Parial’s art covers religious paintings and genre works, figurative art and portraiture, landscapes and still life, prints and mediated photographs and other artistic perambulations. The works have been loaned from various institutional and private collections to reconstruct one of the most colorful successful careers in Philippine Art.

The retrospective exhibition coincides with the launching of the sui generis book on the artist, also entitled Mario VA Parial: Beyond Reality, authored by the curator and published by Phinma Foundation, Inc.

Parial was born on August 13, 1944 in Gapan, Nueva Ecija. He obtained his bachelor of fine arts in 1969 from the then College of Architecture and Fine Arts of the University of Santo Tomás where he taught after graduation. In the 1990s, he was invited to the faculty of the UP College of Fine Arts to teach printmaking. He died on December 22, 2013.

Highlight of the retrospective exhibition is a formal tribute to feature remembrances of Parial as painter, printmaker, photographer, and professor by people from the arts, business and academe to close the exhibit.

-Louise Parial