Born in Tondo, Manila, in the Philippines, Cesar Legaspi (1917 – 1994) is regarded as the pioneer of Neo-Realism in the Philippines. Known as a modern art proponent, he was honoured as a National Artist in Visual Arts in 1990 and was identifed as one of the Thirteen Moderns, a group of modernists who rebelled against the conservative academic art of that period.
