Marcel Antonio

Marcel Antonio (born June 28, 1965) is a Filipino painter. Considered one of the most promising young talents in Philippine contemporary art while still attending the University of the Philippines' College of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, he launched a solo show and thereafter dropped out of the college to continue to produce collections of his distinct narrative as well as pseudo-narrative figurative paintings influenced by modernism and 1980s postmodernism. Since then, Antonio produced enough sold-out works to be quickly counted as one of the Philippines' young painters most proficient in the magic realist sort of post-expressionism in the country.

After leaving college to focus on his developing professional career, Antonio became a sought-after artist among collectors in the Manila art market. Sustained demand contributed to his success in mainstream galleries, with multiple sold-out exhibitions organized by his dealers.

Antonio's works involve a clear post-expressionism with mysterious themes, often utilizing fabular images that combine myth with reality, creating stories behind his paintings that has continued to capture Manila's mainstream gallery-goers' attention with their deep sense of play.

In the Philippines, Antonio has exhibited in major galleries including Galleria Duemila, The Drawing Room, Gallery BIG, Galleria Quattrocento (his recurring mother gallery), and Altro Mondo Arte Contemporanea, where his following has included local and international collectors. He has also exhibited in Berlin, Australia, and Singapore.

Life and work Antonio is the son of Filipino painters Angelito Antonio and Norma Belleza and brother to painters Emil Antonio and Fatima Baquiran.

While still a sophomore in the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, Antonio emerged as one of the school's "most promising" art students when he launched a solo exhibition.

De Veyra described Antonio's art as a face- and gestures-leaning figurative narrative or quasi-narrative art that avoids both the "folk happiness" and the "expressionism" of past and recent Philippine figurative art. Then de Veyra tagged Antonio's body of works as of a "blue funk erotica" or "trance erotica" embracing the melancholic or otherwise the vexed expression. He touted this kind of painting as the subtle sort of fetish erotica that relies on the drama of melancholia, instead of on pure eroticism, as the secret springboard for the production of erotic imagining. Trance painting is deemed by de Veyra to have been culled from the art of Blue Period Picasso and Diego Velázquez, as much as from Raphael, Degas, Chagall, Giorgio de Chirico, Nobuyoshi Araki, and the "defamiliarization" technique of the Russian Formalists.

In November 2014, Antonio enjoined the then-freelancing critic de Veyra, along with painter Simkin de Pio, to launch diskurso art magazine, an online art magazine-cum-blog for which he would act as publisher, with de Veyra as the chief writer and editor.

Selected shows Solo shows Cultural Center of the Philippines Brix Gallery, Manila Liongoren Art Gallery, Manila "Recent Artworks", The Drawing Room, Manila (June 3–21, 2000) "Langue et Parole", West Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong (July 13–25, 2000) "Dialogo", The Drawing Room, Manila "Les Petites Histoires", Ad Infinitum Galleries, Manila "Märchen", Jasmine Fine Arts, Singapore "Sturm und Drang", Galleria Quattrocento, Makati (September 26 - October 9, 2009) Glorietta Art Center, Makati (July, 2010) "The Romantic Lie: Desire, Ennui, Anxiety", Water Dragon Gallery, Yuchengco Museum, Makati (February 2012)

Selected group exhibitions Raab Galleries, West Berlin, Germany Art Exchange, Australia Alliance Française de Manille Pinaglabanan Art Galleries, Manila