Shell National Students Arts Competition

Winners of the Shell National Students Art Competition (held annually from 1951 to 1971) gathered for a grand reunion at the lobby of the Hotel Intercontinental Manila in September 1989, nearly two decades since the competition was discontinued.

"It's about time the company resurrect a twenty-year-old tradition," Cesar Buenaventura said, announcing that the art competition would again be held every year. "The time is ripe for a revival."

Juvenal Sanso, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, Jose Joya, and Ang Kiu Kok were among the artists in attendance. Other esteemed personalities on the Philippine art scene also took part in the celebration: Veronica Lim, Manuel Rodriguez, Jr., Angelito Antonio, Raul R. Dayao, Edgar Doctor, Alfredo Liongoren, Virgilio Aviado, Prudencio Lamaroza, and Mario Parial.

Elgie Enriquez, who took charge of organizing the competition during his tenure at Shell, joined the nostalgic affair to pay tribute to the winners, many of who had gone on to become leaders in their field after having first received recognition from Shell as promising young artists. Nicanor Ricio, Nestor Vinluan, Jonahmar Salvosa, Jesus Fernandez, Danilo Sibayan, Edgar Soller - all had once been winners of the prestigious Shell art prize.

The motivation behind forming the National Students Art Competition (NSAC) was quite simple, Enriquez said: "to find a suitable subject for the Shell 1952 calendar." But the nationwide contest was significant because it was the first to be sponsored by a multinational corporation. Moreover, it was at the time the only contest open exclusively to young artists and not professionals.

Organizing the competition was not easy for Shell. "We did not know anything about art," said Enriquez. "But we had J. Walter Thompson, the advertising agency, who had contacts among the professional artists of the Art Association of the Philippines [AAP]." The AAP and, in particular, Purita Kalaw Ledesma, who headed it, was extremely helpful in managing the competition.

After receiving an encouraging response of fifty entries for the first competition, Shell decided to begin holding the NSAC every year, and soon it was a big event eagerly anticipated by student artists.

"It was not just a painting competition," Enriquez explained. "In later years there were different aspects to it but all related to art. For instance, we added sculpture [1961], graphic arts [1966], watercolor, tempera, and photography [1970]."

"On -the-spot painting was the most exciting category," he recounted. "Participants [would be] taken to a site on the day of the contest where they [would have to] render an oil painting of the landscape from nine [in the morning] to three [in the afternoon]."

The competition's comprehensiveness (and prize money) helped identify it as a serious undertaking for artists. At the same time, it identified Shell as a patron of the arts. To win in the NSAC meant that one had a genuine talent.

"The NSAC was the 'thing' then," said Lao Lian Ben, winner from 1968 to 1970 who was to become one of the county's leading contemporary artists. And somehow it helped boost your morale as a young artist."

Rosario "Charito" Bitanga, who won third prize in the 1957 NSAC, remembered how the recognition gave her more confidence. "{Winning] the NSAC motivated me to strive more as an artist." Bitanga went on to become dean of the Philippine Women's University School of Fine Arts.

A great number of winners eventually made it in the real world as critically acclaimed artists, both locally and internationally. But the NSAC did not only benefit individual artists. Beginning in 1960, it began sponsoring scholarship grants for public school teachers, in partnership with the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts. Also, in order to bring art to the grassroots level, the NSAC organized various exhibits and traveling art shows.

Nevertheless, in spite of the NSAC's prestige and widespread popularity, its continuation was interrupted in the 1970s, when the oil companies came under fire because of gasoline price increases. Students marched in the street protesting loudly and sometimes violently against Shell and the other oil companies. Some protesters who considered art to be a bourgeois propaganda tool of imperialism attacked the NSAC directly.

"Times were bad," Enriquez remembered. "[The NSAC] wasn't relevant anymore."

Though Shell cut links with the arts from 1972 to 1989, it witnessed the remarkable evolution of two decades' worth of NSAC winners during this period. Among those who spread their wings into the international art scene were Glenn Bautista and Bencab. Those who made waves at home included Norma Belleza, Santiago Bose, Angel Cacnio, Orlando Castillo, Danilo Dalena, Benjamin C. Francisco, Raul Isidro, Noel Manalo, Steve Santos, Francisco M. Verano, and Edwin Wilwayco.

[From the book "The Shell Story in the Philippines", 2004]