MASTER restorer/painter Mariano Madarang, 71, will have a major retrospective exhibit of his works at the Art Center space of SM Megamall on February 8.

A protégé of the late National Artist Victorio Edades, who was then dean of the UST College of Fine Arts, Madarang finished his BFA under a Ramon Magsaysay scholarship. He pursued advanced studies in visual and plastic arts under a Felicing Tirona grant at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii. He also received a John D. Rocketfeller grant in art conservation/restoration, training at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. under Dr. Harry Glazier, doing restoration on Picasso’s Guernica and a large work of Claude Monet.

Madarang observed fresco and mural painting in Mexico at the Academia de Bellas Artes, doing restoration work on Diego Rivera and Tamayo murals and Aztec excavations in the Maya City of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan River. He attended the Tamarind print workshop of Joan Wayne in Los Angeles, and art restoration seminars at the British Royal Academy in London.

Madarang organized the School of Fine Arts at the PWU as its first director during the ‘60s, leading his students to excel in art competitions via a defined Philippine identity. In 1967, he was consultant to the Senate committee on culture, developing a cultural development program for young people in the arts. He also taught at the National Teachers College, and gave free art lessons to the handicapped at Metropolitan Theater.

He opened opportunities for the artist while he was a consultant for Avans Art Center, Print Gallery, Hidalgo Gallery, and Quadros Inc. major movers of Philippine art in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

For his lifetime dedication to the arts, he was voted Most Outstanding Alumnus at UST’s 362nd anniversary. He was also a Golden Thomasian awardee for the contribution and influence he exerted in the flowering of Philippine art.

As a distinguished restorer, Chito Madarang has done work on the majority of our Philippine masters past and present found in many private and corporate art collections.

Madarang is one of the Ten Outstanding Ifugaos of the Cordilleras. He is the last chief of the Burnay tribe of Anao, Ifugao.

His Abstract Episodes are a collection of outstanding acrylic paintings began in 1995 up to the present. Geometrical forms fuse with phosphorescent light bands in stunning and memorable colors, tones and movements.