David Medalla

David Cortez Medalla (23 March 1942 – 28 December 2020) was a Filipino international artist and political activist.

His work ranged from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation, and performance art.

David Cortez Medalla, Jr. was born in Manila, Philippines to David Medalla, Sr. and Juanita Angkay Cortez, both originally from Cebu.

He was the second of five children, including an older half-sister.

During World War II, the family evacuated Manila to the Sta.

Ana Cabaret on the periphery of the city.

The Medalla house was destroyed in the Battle of Manila.

After liberation, Medalla, Sr. built a new family home on Mabini St. in the Ermita district of Manila.

Medalla attended kindergarten at Sta. Isabel College before transferring to Ermita Catholic School.

He would transfer once more, this time to the Philippine Normal School, where he would graduate elementary in 1949.

Afterwards, Medalla attended his first year of high school at the University of the Philippines, first on Padre Faura St. and then at the Diliman campus.

At the beginning of his second year of high school, Medalla's whereabouts were unknown for three weeks.

When he eventually turned up back home, his family learned that he had snuck aboard the SS President Wilson, fallen asleep, and was discovered by its crew only after it had set sail for Hong Kong.

The story was featured in the local news.

Afterwards, Bessie Hackett, an American columnist with the Manila Bulletin, met with Medalla and his parents to discuss the education opportunity for him to attend the Episcopalian high school of St. Mary's in Sagada, high in the Cordillera Mountains.

He attended the school for one year.

In 1952, his parents sent him to Cebu to attend the high school of the University of San Carlos.

He would attend the school for two days before quitting without telling his parents for several months.

Medalla began writing poetry in 1953.

He brought his poems to magazine and newspaper editors and was soon published on the front pages of The Campus Journal and The Philippine Collegian.

Medalla requested that his author image be printed upside down, but the request was rejected.

The next year, poet and journalist Francisco Arcellana, upon the recommendation of playwright Wilfredo Ma. Guerrero, both of whom were professors at the University of the Philippines, interviewed Medalla and wrote about him in the Saturday Morning Magazine.

The article, published in 1954, was entitled "A Boy with Feelings for Words."

Medalla spent this time "meandering from one newspaper office to another."

In 1954, the University of the Philippines invited Medalla to lecture.

He met the president of the university, Vidal Tan, who evaluated Medalla's "mental abilities as approaching genius."

Despite lacking a high school diploma, Tan allowed Medalla to enroll in the university's College of Liberal Arts.

Soon after, Medalla was recommended by Tan to the George Jonas Foundation for their gifted writers program Camp Rising Sun.

The international, full-scholarship program accepted Medalla.

After receiving a travel grant from the Commission for Free Asia, Medalla left for New York on July 7 of the same year.

After the program finished, Medalla stayed in New York and met Mark Van Doren, then a faculty member at Columbia University.

Van Doren recommended Medalla's admission as a special student to Columbia in September 1954.

Medalla attended a philosophy class under John Randall, a modern drama class under Eric Bentley, a literature class under Lionel Trilling, a Greek drama class under Moses Hadas, and a poetry workshop under Léonie Adams.

During his time in New York, Medalla became acquainted with New York-based Filipino artists, including poet José García Villa and painter Alfonso Ossorio.

After returning to Manila, Medalla attended art lectures under Fernando Zóbel de Ayala.

On returning to Manila in March 1955, Medalla transformed his family home in Ermita into an art studio and salon that he called La Cave d'Angley.

There he painted, taught, and hosted intellectual social gatherings.

Visitors to La Cave d'Angley included the Catalan poet Jamie Gil de Biedma who was then working for Campañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas.

During the 1960s in Paris, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard introduced Medalla's performance of Brother of Isidora at the academy of Raymond Duncan.

Later, Louis Aragon would introduce another performance, and Marcel Duchamp honoured him with a "medallic" object.