Purita Kalaw-Ledesma (b. 1914 in Manila, d. 2005) was a germinal figure in Philippine art. She was an artist and a writer, an arts manager and cultural worker, a patroness and collector. Kalaw-Ledesma’s father was the historian, journalist, and public servant Teodoro M. Kalaw, and her mother was the carnival queen, suffragette, writer, and businesswoman Pura Villanueva-Kalaw.
As the renowned art critic and professor Alice Guillermo puts it, “very few have shed light on the history of Philippine art in the way that Purita Kalaw-Ledesma had done in her life.” She was the founding president of the Art Association of the Philippines, established some years after the Second World War in 1948. Purita studied Painting at the UP School of Fine Arts from 1929 to 1932, and Design at the University of Michigan the following year. In 1955, she finished her master’s thesis in Education titled A Critical Analysis of Modern Painting. She is the author of several important art history books, among them, The Struggle for Philippine Art, Edades: National Artist (published in 1974 and 1979, respectively and both co-authored with Amadis Ma. Guerrero), and The Biggest Little Room: Philippine Art Gallery (1987). She produced the autobiography And Life Goes On (1994), Spiritual Register (2001), an annotation of T.M. Kalaw’s works, as well as the cookbook Family Recipes (1986).
As an art patron, Kalaw-Ledesma supported the cause of modern art as it was gaining ground in the Philippines. She was a staunch advocate of modernism when the art scene tended to favor the conservative tradition of art making. She collected art works made by Filipino artists from 1948-2000. At that time, she also gathered letters, posters, clippings on art from newspapers and pasted them on scrapbooks, resulting in 83 volumes of unique archival material. It is regarded today as a comprehensive and valuable resource on Philippine art and culture.
Purita Kalaw-Ledesma’s milieu and achievements are thoroughly discussed in the publication The Life and Times of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma (published by Vibal and KLFI in 2017, winner, National Book Awards 2018) and the children’s book Ang Mga Iskrapbuk ni Purita/The Scrapbooks of Purita (published by Vibal in 2020). Her influence on art and culture in the Philippines and in the region have been a source of inspiration and interpretation for academics and cultural workers, many of whom have done onsite research at the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Center and the Rotunda Gallery of the National Gallery Singapore, where the digitized archives can be accessed.
