The Ateneo Art Gallery holds over 500 artworks that include paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, photographs and posters. The collection traces its roots to the late
Fernando Zóbel (1920–1984). Painter, art scholar and teacher at the Ateneo, Zóbel donated over 200 artworks to form a study collection for university students. First housed in Bellarmine Hall in 1961, it moved to the ground floor of Rizal Library in 1967, and moved to the Arts Wing in Areté in 2017. While the Fernando Zóbel bequest includes works of an earlier generation — notably
Fernando Amorsolo and
Fabian de la Rosa — it consists of paintings mostly by key postwar modernists, especially those who had exhibited in the now legendary Philippine Art Gallery of the 1950s and 60s. These include
Vicente Manansala,
Hernando Ocampo,
Anita Magsaysay-Ho,
Arturo Luz,
Cesar Legaspi,
Napoleon Abueva,
Ang Kiukok and
David Medalla. Through the years, other philanthropists and artists followed Zóbel's initiative to donate works of art to the Gallery, filling gaps in the collection with characteristic pieces by
Galo Ocampo and
Nena Saguil, among others. The Gallery is renowned for having the country's most comprehensive collection of works by the social realists of the 1970s and 80s. It also has an active acquisition program to represent key examples of today's postmodern hybrid tendencies in the permanent collection. Contemporary artists represented include
Egai Talusan Fernandez,
Imelda Cajipe-Endaya and
Brenda Fajardo. == Gallery ==