The art gallery looks too modest to attract passers by. Thus, only a few people with either a strong passion for art or high levels of curiousity will make the effort to pay a visit.

Among students at the Ateneo De Manila University, the art gallery seems to be less popular than the Rizal Library, which is located above the gallery. While hundreds of students visit the library everyday, only a few students come in to see the art gallery's collection.

Despite its modest appearance, the gallery gives visitors a pleasant surprise as it hosts the works of some of the world's most prominent painters such as Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt and Salvador Dali.

"It's a university museum. It's the first and only museum in the city of Manila dedicated to modern and contemporary arts," said Ian Carlo Jaucian, an assistant to the curator of Ateneo Art Gallery.

Today, the art gallery hosts nearly 500 artworks - paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, posters and sculptures - by Filipino and foreign artists. They represent social realist, abstract and post-modern artworks, many of which are donations from its founder Fernando Zobel de Ayala (1924-1984).

Zobel was himself a painter and teacher at the Ateneo. He donated over 200 artworks, a collection which later becomes the object of study for university students.

Jaucian, who is an art school graduate and an aspiring Filipino artist, said the art gallery has three main halls to display the artworks. The artworks are grouped in the Modern Philippines Art collection, the Print and Drawing collection and the Contemporary Philippines Art collection.

The Modern Philippines Art collection consists of the works of an early generation of Filipino artists such as Fabian de la Rosa and Fernando Amorsolo and those from the postwar modernists like Manansala, Ocampo, Magsaysay-Ho, Luz, Legaspi, Abueva, Ang kiukok, Navarro and Medalla.

The Contemporary Philippines Art collection showcases the works of Diosdado Lorenzo, Galo Ocampo and Nena Saguil. In this section, we see many artworks are inspired by the real life of the postwar Philippines and the martial law period during the Ferdinand Marcos era. Some works show the reality of the Balikbayan (returning migrant workers), which like in Indonesia is also a social reality.

Where are the works of the acclaimed and globally known artists?

They are displayed in a separate room with special conditions - less light but with cooler temperature. The glass door is always closed to maintain the temperature. "These are precious artworks. So, we apply special treatment to keep them in good condition," said the soft-speaking Jaucian.

The special room is called the Print and Drawing Section. It hosts over 300 works by local and international artists from the Renaissance to the present. The works include etchings, engravings, woodcuts, lithographs and some other graphic artworks.

At this section, we can take a closer look at Salvador Dali's Scene from Dante's Inferno lithograph, stare at Rembrandt's The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight etching or try to understand Pablo Picasso's Le Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu etching.

A visit to the gallery and a good look at the works of these legendary artists give an extra motivation to explore more artworks.

Even though the art gallery is small and modest it presents an ample picture of the Philippines art landscape. It may be small in size but it is surely a big idea. For those who admire big names in artworks and those who want to get an idea of what Philippines art looks like, Ateneo Art Gallery is worth a visit.

Ateneo Art Gallery

Ground Floor, Rizal Library

Ateneo de Manila University

Loyola Heights, Quezon City 1108

Philippines

website: gallery.ateneo.edu

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