Federico Aguilar Alcuaz

Born on June 6, 1932 in the City of Manila to Mariano Ana Aguilar and Encarnacion Alcuaz, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz was the sixth of eleven children. Mariano’s brood consisted of seven boys and four girls.

The elder Alcuaz was a lawyer with a successful practice, but aside from pursuing his career he was also active in the field of arts, particularly in music. Mariano could play the violin and piano. He was a composer as well and one of his biggest dreams then was to have his music published and performed by an orchestra in New York. His wife Encarnacion, on the other hand, graduated high school from La Concordia and was a full-time housewife to the Aguilar household.

The young Federico took his elementary education at the Alejandro Albert Elementary School in Dapitan St. in Manila. He completed it at the Padre Gomez Elementary School in Sampaloc when the family moved residences to P. Campa St. near the University of Santo Tomas (UST).

Federico’s family and his teachers noticed an exceptional talent in the intrepid young man. In his early teens, he would draw and sketch endlessly for hours on end. His favorites were to do sketches of people, several of them done from rote memory. Understandably, he became quite popular with his teachers as he would gift them with his personalized drawings of their portraits. Federico’s exposure to the arts came not only from his love of drawing but also from the family’s intense interest in music. Many of his siblings played various types of musical instruments and indeed there were quite a few pianos in the Aguilar household. The instrument chosen for Federico by his father was the cello and he grew up playing it quite competently that it landed him some scholarships. He also had a good voice and would occasionally be chosen to sing solo parts with the choir during novena sessions and religious ceremonies at the UST.

Like most of Metro Manilans, World War II saw the Aguilar household evacuate to the mountains of Montalban to avoid being in the crosshairs of battle. Interestingly, there are some parallels to the life of another internationally renowned artist Juvenal Sanso, whose family likewise moved to Montalban during this period. It was an old family friend, Alfonso Doronila, who took in the Aguilar family and provided them lodging during the tumultuous war years.

After the smoke of World War II had cleared, young Federico returned to Manila and pursued his high school education with the Benedictines at the San Beda College in Mendiola.