Raymundo Albano

Raymundo "Ray" Albano (27 January 1947 – 6 August 1985) was a Filipino curator, art critic, writer, poet, painter, and scholar who served as museum director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines from 1970 until his death in 1985.

Biography Raymundo Albano was born in Bacarra, Ilocos Norte on 27 January 1947. He studied at the Ateneo de Manila, earning a bachelor's degree in 1968 with the distinction of receiving the John Mulry Award for Literary Excellence. Shortly after, he held his first one-man exhibition at Joy T. Dayrit's Print Gallery. He exhibited thereafter with the Luz Gallery, the ABC Galleries, and Sining Kamalig. He was named among the recipients of the first Thirteen Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1970. In 1974, he won an Honorable Mention in the Tokyo Biennale of International Prints. In 1977, Albano received a grant as Artist-in-Residence under the Fulbright-Hayes Fund International Exchange of Scholars at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

Paintings Raymundo Albano's works are often credited as precursors of conceptual art in the Philippines along with the work of his contemporary Roberto Chabet. His paintings are mostly abstractions that incorporate found objects. Several pieces are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Singapore Art Museum, and the National Museum of Fine Arts of the Philippines, aside from prestigious private collections. He introduced the exhibition of multimedia works during his tenure at the CCP and also personally designed several exhibition posters. He is a founding partner of Finale Art File, one of the oldest contemporary art galleries in Manila.

Poetry Ray Albano started writing poetry in the 1950s as a high school student in San Sebastian College, where he wrote for the school paper. In Ateneo he contributed poems to Heights, the university's literary journal. According to curator and scholar Patrick D. Flores, Albano is considered to be in the league of Filipino modernists, Aurelio Alvero, Hernando R. Ocampo, and David Medalla. The poet Emmanuel S. Torres wrote about Raymundo R. Albano's poetic style as "at once abstractive and pictorial—not as posture but as fluent assertion of a fully achieved sensibility."

Illness and death Ray Albano suffered from frequent asthma attacks and scoliosis for most of his life and had to walk with a limp. His unusual posture earned him the monicker "The Quasimodo of the Cultural Center" which he self-mockingly referred to himself. He died in 1985 at the age of 38.