Romance in Spain

As Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, things started happening for the young painter. In 1956, at the age of 24, he was invited to hold a one-man exhibit, his first of several in Spain, at the highly prestigious Sala Direccion General, Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid. At that time, he was the youngest ever to have exhibited at that venue. He also staged back-to-back exhibitions in Barcelona, at the Galerias Layetañas and the Galerias Manila. This was also the year that he met the future Mrs. Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, a winsome young German lady named Ute Gisela Schmitz, a student of business and languages in Barcelona.

It was a romance that blossomed quickly. A renaissance woman, Ute was also a student of fencing at the military club in Barcelona. Her teacher, a Filipino named Mr. Reyes, knew Alcuaz and introduced them to each other. Shortly after being introduced, Alcuaz and Ute found out they had a lot of things in common. Among these was their strong interest in Asian culture. They would talk for hours on end about Asian and Japanese art. Ute told him that she had a collection of books about these subjects and Alcuaz showed great interest in seeing them. To this day, Ute still remembers where they agreed to meet again the very next day to talk about their common interests. This was at the café in the Paseo de Gracia, right after they were introduced to one another. Rod Paras-Perez quotes Ute in his definitive book about Alcuaz entited Parallel Texts (Artlink Group, Inc., 2005): “From that time on, we spent a lot of time together. We went to dances, watched movies…we fell in love.” It was convenient that, like Alcuaz, Ute too was fluent in Spanish.

Alcuaz and Ute became inseparable. The next year, in the spring of 1957, Alcuaz was convinced Ute was the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He lost no time in going to Hamburg, Germany to visit Ute’s mother and stepfather and ask for her hand in marriage. Armed with the approval of Ute’s parents, they then traveled together to various cities and parts of Germany. Alcuaz and Ute were married two years later, in September 22, 1959, at the Señora de Nuria church in Barcelona.

For their wedding, they selected two principal witnesses: the Philippine Consul to Spain Leopoldo Brias as well as a distinguished gentleman by the name of Señor Benjamin Gayubar. Señor Gayubar was first introduced to Alcuaz’s paintings in 1956 when the artist held a one-man show at the Galerias Layetañas. From that time on, Señor Gayubar not only became his foremost collector but a great friend as well. Later on, Señor Gayubar would become godfather to Alcuaz and Ute’s second son Andreas. It is the Gayubar collection that formed the bulk of the Alcuaz family’s collection in Europe. In the last two decades before his death, Alcuaz had taken to buying back his earlier paintings. When the Gayubar collection became available, he purchased it back from the Gayubar family.

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Rendezvous at the Park 20 x 16 in | Oil on Canvas Board Private Collection

Alcuaz and Ute were blessed with three children, all of them sons. Christian Michael, the eldest, became Alcuaz’s confidant and now handles the Alcuaz estate’s business affairs, was born in Hamburg in 1960. The second son, Andreas-Federic, was born in 1962 in Barcelona, and the youngest, Wolfgang Matthias, was born in Manila in 1965. Christian’s godfather was Jose (Pepe) Rodriguez, Alcuaz’s best friend during his early Barcelona days. All three children then grew up to be professionals in various creative fields. Christian finished university with a degree in design, Andreas completed a college degree in graphic design, while Matthias finished a university degree in fine arts and is currently a painter based in New York.

Alcuaz proved to be a doting father. Every week, he would bring a bouquet of flowers to add color to their Barcelona home where, like the house he himself grew up in, music was also a staple. Christian remembers him as being very supportive and allowed the children to independently develop their own interests and talents. He would only instruct or teach the children if the children themselves were the ones who asked him how something should be done.

In Barcelona, Alcuaz kept a tight group of artist friends. Every week, much like the Saturday Group of Artists of Manila set up by National Artists H.R. Ocampo and Cesar Legaspi, who two decades later would meet regularly at the Taza de Oro in the 1970s in Malate, Alcuaz and his friends gathered at a restaurant at the Paseo de Gracia called La Puñalada. In Barcelona, he sketched endlessly and tirelessly. Whether it was during his regular strolls with Ute at the Paseo de Gracia or at the

Rambla Cataluña, or during their visit to parks, Alcuaz would always try to capture on paper his impressions and his ideas. In 1957, Alcuaz put up a studio in the city that became his base and creative sanctuary whenever he was in Europe. He maintained this for four decades or when he closed this atelier down permanently.

Alicia Coseteng writing in the book Art Philippines (1992) notes that “Alcuaz was drawn into the world of his European fellows, particularly the Catalan artists and intellectuals.” He became active and animated with his colleagues and fellow members of the La Puñalada group, which had been founded by the artists Rusinol, Casas and Picasso who were the rebel leaders against the conservative and highly traditional Salon artists. Alcuaz himself together with his contemporaries Muxart, Aluma and Aragones, began to identify themselves with the neofigurative movement which was by then gathering momentum, not only in Spain, but in France and Italy as well. They became the core of the Spanish ‘neofiguratives’, following in the spirit of that great Spaniard – Picasso.

It was during his European stay that Alcuaz developed his interest and fluency of other languages. He was already quite proficient in Filipino, English, and Spanish. During a visit to Hamburg, he took an interest in German and became proficient in this as well. He also learned to speak a little French.

Another Alcuaz interest was water. Not only did he like to capture this subject in his canvases, such as in many of his numerous works of the Manila Bay and other bodies of water but he himself liked to be in the water. Ute recalls that Alcuaz loved to swim and that among their previous pastimes was visiting various beaches and resorts in Europe.

The nine years that Alcuaz spent in Europe proved to be among the most eventful and significant years of his life in Europe. In Spain, he had exhibits in various galleries in Santander, Burgos, Bilbao, Barcelona, and Palma de Mallorca. He also staged exhibits in other countries: in Lisbon and Estoril in Portugal, in Hamburg, Germany and at the Galerie Paul Cezanne in Paris, France.

He also received numerous awards such as first prize at the Premio Moncada (1957) and the Prix Francisco Goya (1958) award in Barcelona, the first prize at the Pintura Sant Pol del Mar in Spain (1961) and second prize at the Premio Vancell at the Fourth Biennial of Tarrasa in Barcelona (1964). Recognition for his art extended beyond Spanish borders. In Paris, he was awarded the Diploma of Honor at the International Exhibition of Art Libre in 1961, the distinguished honor of becoming a Chevalier of Arts, Letters, and Sciences, an award from the French Government in 1964 and also the Order of French Genius in 1964.