Aquino names six new National Artists

President Benigno Aquino III has named six new National Artists, the Palace announced Friday.

The artists are Alice Reyes (for Dance), Francisco Coching (for Visual Arts), Cirilo Bautista (for Literature), Francisco Feliciano (for Music), Ramon Santos (for Music) and Jose Maria Zaragoza (for Architecture, Design and Allied Arts).

Reyes is the founder of Ballet Philippines and an advocate of ballet and modern dance.

Bautista, poet and non-fiction writer, is in the Carlos Palanca Award Hall of Fame, a co-founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council and a professor at the De La Salle University.

Feliciano is one of the country's leading composers and an exponent of liturgical music. Among his major works are Missa Mysterium and Sikhay sa Kabila ng Paalam.

Santos, a former dean of the University of the Philippines College of Music, championed experimental music, ethnomusicology, and the use of Philippine indigenous musical instruments. Santos was art director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

The two posthumous awardees are Coching and Zaragoza.

Coching was a Filipino comics illustrator. Among the characters he created were Bing Bigotilyo, Marabini, Hagibis, and Sabas ang Barbaro.  He died at the age of 79 in 1998.

Zaragoza was an architect and known for having designed the Sto. Domingo Church in Quezon City and the Lopez Building in Ortigas Center, Pasig which now houses the head offices of Meralco. — DVM/ELR, GMA News