Charito Bitanga (b. 1934)
Uptown, Downtown
signed and dated 1959 (lower right)
oil on canvas
32" x 24" (81 cm x 61 cm)




EXHIBITEDRackham Amphitheatre Building University of Michigan,Invitational Regional Art Exhibition, Michigan, 1959
LITERATUREReyes, Cid. Living for Art: R. Bitanga. Larawan Book Publishing.Manila. 2006. Page 39 with a full-color illustration on page 35.

In September 1959, Charito Bitanga, then a 24-year-old recent Fine Arts graduate from UST, arrived in Michigan to enroll at the Cranbrook Academy of Fine Arts, one of the leading American graduate schools for architecture, art, and design. During her academic stay at Cranbrook, Bitanga slowly abandoned the representational approach to art she had learned at UST. At the academy, the leading American abstractionists of that time became her professors. One was Fred Mitchell, the primary influence on Bitanga's transition to abstraction through his encouragement of finding one's identity in painting. It was also Mitchell who immediately saw Bitanga's artistic flair in the mentioned style. Another professor, Jack Madson, induced in Bitanga an appreciation for the potency and expressiveness of linear forms. Madson's influence is discernible in this 1959 piece by Bitanga. In Living for Art: R. Bitanga, Cid Reyes vividly describes the work at hand: "A 1959 work, Uptown, Downtown, reminds the viewer of the impact of Professor Madson's influence. Inspired by a trip to New York, Bitanga, filled with the exuberance of a hectic trip to the city that never sleeps, made explicit the stimulus of motion. The careening cars, the intertwining turnpikes, and more importantly, the internal, emotional impulse stirred by an observed scene of speeding dynamics. But already evident is the controlled discipline that allows the artist to render motion without being overpowered by the rhythmic, multidirectional flow of visual energies.” Uptown, Downtown would be chosen as one of the featured works in the Invitational Regional Art Exhibition at the University of Michigan in 1959. (A.M.)