As his horizons expand and his vision deepens, his paintings reflect a converging unity of personal recreation. Spread throughout his recent canvasses is a textural cohesiveness suggestive of the diverse influences of time. Figures caught in archetypal poses and ritual groupings, human conditions lifted into an eternal resilience through light and flourescence. The total is a unity receding and advancing, strong in its structural depth, light in its delicacy of line. It is as if they were murals etched upon rock by endlessly recurring human reflections, joyful in the very moment of their being.

Mexico profoundly affected his vision and in its fusion with his Oriental heritage, he crystallized his personal and maturing style. His effort toward unity and contemporary awareness served to define his unique quality as a painter.

In his Philippine paintings and in his constant returning to his native images, Tabuena reveals a disciplined sensibility of human poetic, refinement, fragility, transparency of color, piled perspectives, lightness of stylization, and economy of suggested abstraction. Radiant colors prismatically envelop his figures, obliterating their solidness and breathing into their existence an aura of poetic mirage.

In October 1995, Tabuena was honored with a major exhibit sponsored by the Instituto de Bellas Artes, Centro Cultural Ignacio for his 40 years of residency and dedication in the artistic life of Mexico in the Mexican artist's colony in Guanajuato. A similar exhibit in his honor was launched in November 1996 in in Mexico, in cooperation with the Philippine Embassy.

He is the recipient of various awards and citations, including the Golden Centaur Award from the Academia Italia, Master of Painting honoris causa from the

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