The book is about the life and art of a veritable folk hero in his hometown Angono and one of the most important Filipino artists. Botong Francisco devoted his life to art. After spending the 1930s immersed in graphic art and modernism, Botong embarked on large-scale mural painting for which he became renowned. The vast selection of his most important paintings, sketches, and costume designs is beautifully supplemented by vintage photographs, documents, and film stills from over thirty public and private collections. One could not ask for a 
more comprehensive study of Botong’s oeuvre; finally, forty years after Botong’s death, his work is the subject of the sweeping retrospective it deserves.

Botong Francisco’s Angono roots are uncovered anew in scholarly discussions of his works in this publication. The essays delve deep into Botong’s bonds to home, traditions, and history. We come to a new understanding of how much of Botong’s local ties inform, influence, and inspire his compelling visual articulation of the native, the heroic, the nationalist, and the modernist in his works. Florentina Colayco Dean, College of Fine Arts, UP Diliman Exegesis of Botong Francisco’s visual text was the implicit challenge which the authors of this book imposed on themselves. How to wrest the critical literature on the works of the great Filipino muralist from its traditional folkloric reading has ever been the problem. The authors have refreshingly transcended the panegyric that through the years Botong has been wreathed with.