Famous Filipino Artists: Alfonso A. Ossorio (1916-1990) was an abstract expressionist artist who was born in Manila in 1916 to wealthy Filipino parents from the province of Negros Occidental. His heritage was Hispanic, Filipino, and Chinese. Between the ages of eight and thirteen, he attended school in England. At age fourteen, he moved to the United States. From 1934 to 1938, he studied fine art at Harvard University and then continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. He became an American citizen in 1933 and served as a medical illustrator in the United States Army during World War II.
Alfonso A. Ossorio’s early work was surrealist. He was an admirer and early collector of the paintings of Jackson Pollock who counted him as a good friend. In the early 1950s, Ossorio was pouring oil and enamel paints onto canvas.
Ossorio was represented alongside Dubuffet and nearly 140 other artists in the Museum of Modern Art's 1961 exhibition The Art of Assemblage, which introduced the practice to a broad public.