Romulo Olazo was born in Balayan, Batangas in the Philippines in 1934. In 1951 he entered the fine arts program of the University Santo Tomas, and went on first to make a name as a major printmaker, winning numerous awards and exhibiting widely both in the Philippines and representing the Philippines internationally as far afield as Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo and Sao Paolo.

Olazo began his career as an artist at a critical juncture, when the foundations of a modernist tradition were being laid, by key figures such as Vicente Manansala, Victorio Edades, HR Ocampo and Fernando Zobel.

Olazo first came to the fore as a printmaker who made striking innovations in this field. This fed into the development of his Diaphanous series, a unique body of abstract paintings that "are veritable visions of light. They have been likened to dragonfly wings, sheets of gossamer veil or gauze, and even a symphony."

In 1972, he was awarded the coveted Thirteen Artists Award by the Cultural Centre of the Philippines (CCP). In the 1970s he developed his renowned Diaphanous series of paintings. He has held regular solo exhibitions at pioneering galleries such as the Luz Gallery, and Finale Art File and major institutions such as the CCP in the Philippines since 1974. He was recently included in the book 13 Painters for the 21st Century.

Source:
"Romulo Olazo", Kulay Piwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art, /www.kulay-diwa.com/romulo_olazo

The Diaphanous works are the single most significant body of works for the Philippine modern artist, Romulo Olazo. Stretching our four decades and more than 20,000 studies, sketches and paintings, the extended series Olazo titled Diaphanous is not only the artist's most significant and recognized body of work, but also a defining body of work in the history of modern abstract art in Philippines and in Asia. With the Diaphanous extended series, Olazo strove for immateriality, transparency, and a quality of in-betweenness. 'Reading' these works for meaning, or finding meaning with references in reality become a futile effort, especially as one considers that they have been created with the intent and focus of an artist totally absorbed in resolving and attaining a particular visual appearance.

The state of suspension, even a spectral look is what Olazo spent the better part of his artistic career pursuing. Layers and layers of screens create what Philippine art critic Cid Reyes describes as a 'whispery fusion of matter and illusion'.

In the 1960s, Olazo was a successful commercial art director at an advertising firm, and only left his job in 1974 in a decisive step to pursue the life of an artist wholly. In a couple of decades, he then established himself as one of the leading artists of his generation. He worked across painting and print-making, mastering the gamut of print forms, from woodcut to etching, serigraph, silkscreen and collograph, and expertly combining both painting and printmaking in his major series, Diaphanous and Permutation.