A Poet in Exile (Jose Garcia Villa)
signed and dated 1978 (lower right)
acrylic and pencil on paper
26 1/2" x 19 1/2" (67 cm x 50 cm)


EXHIBITEDAyala Museum, BenCab Portraits, Makati City, November 28, 2015 - January 24, 2016
LITERATUREFlores, Patrick D., ed. BenCab: Filipino Artist (Exhibitions Catalog). Benguet: BenCab Art Foundation, Inc., 2019. Full-color illustration and photo caption on page 148.
After the critical success of his first Larawan series, Bencab delved into a subject most familiar to him—the Filipino diaspora. Aptly named the Larawan II, the works in this series are visual diaries of Filipino migrants, expatriates, and exiles, in which Bencab explores themes of cultural alienation. Among the personalities he depicted in those works was the eminent Filipino poet-in-exile Jose Garcia Villa.Jose Garcia Villa was born in Manila on August 5, 1908, to SimeoÌn Villa (Aguinaldo's personal physician) and Guia Garcia. At an early age, Villa knew that his passion lay in literature. He attended the University of the Philippines but was suspended by the university administration in 1929 after a series of erotic poems he made titled 'Man Songs,' in which he compared a woman's breast to a coconut, were published in The Philippines Herald. The Manila Court of First Instance even fined him for obscenity. That same year, Villa won 'Best Story of the Year' for his story Mir-I-Nisa in a contest sponsored by the Philippine Free Press. Villa received a prize of P1,000.Villa found the conservative atmosphere in the Philippines too suffocating for his aggressive, bold writing style. Using the prize he won at the contest, Villa migrated to the United States in search of artistic freedom. He enrolled first at the University of New Mexico, where he obtained his bachelor's degree. He attended Columbia University in New York City afterward to pursue postgraduate studies. There, Villa settled in Greenwich Village. In the 'Big Apple,' Villa became the sole Asian poet. In 1933, his work Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others became the first work of fiction by a Filipino author to be published by a leading US-based press. In 1942, Villa published his first poetry collection in America, Have Come, Am Here. It became a finalist for the 1943 Pulitzer Prize.Villa's numerous recognitions include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a Poetry Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Philippines Heritage Award. In 1973, Villa was proclaimed National Artist for Literature. Villa was one of three Filipinos, along with JoseÌ Rizal and Nick Joaquin, included in World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time, published in 2000. It features over 1,600 poems written by poets from different nations spanning 4,000 years, starting from the development of early writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Villa is an influential figure in both Filipino and Asian-American literature.Bencab and Villa bear similar fates in their quest to find one's own artistic path and destiny. They first crossed paths with each other in 1971, at Bencab’s exhibition at the private New York home of couturier Till Traina, his wife Caroline’s friend. The show was attended by none other than Villa himself. Villa may have heard previously of Bencab and his towering achievements, since the latter was already an emerging, globetrotting artist at the time.Bencab immortalizes Villa in this 1978 work from the Larawan II series, titled A Poet in Exile. Here, Bencab renders grids. In what seems like a prison, it alludes to Villa's diaspora to a foreign land in search of artistic freedom, which he found elusive in his homeland. His poetry, represented by commas (Villa called his poetic style 'comma poems'), is “caged” in a speech balloon, symbolizing his alienation and isolation from his native land, despite the numerous acclaims and recognitions he received in a foreign nation. All the images in the Larawan II series were based on photographs taken by Bencab himself. Cid Reyes writes in BENCAB: “This alone speaks of the artist’s personal transference of empathy from the photographic to the painterly image.” (A.M.)