Born in the Philippines, in the fifties Aguilar Alcuaz moved to Spain, which was to be his adopted country for many years. After winning many distinctions in his home country, in 1954 he won a scholarship from the Spanish government to study at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. After spending nine years in Barcelona, an important city for the arts at that time, he eventually ended up in Paris, after which his fame spread internationally and he garnered a name for himself on three continents.

Before painting, Aguilar had studied law, though the fact that his father was a composer meant that he had always had an inclination towards the arts. His first exhibition in 1953 was of portraits, in which one could appreciate his evident admiration for Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972), one of the most acclaimed Philippine painters and portraitists of the time.

Aguilar’s tapestries are truly unique. They should not be viewed as paintings transferred to textile, but an adaptation of both disciplines that are conflated to create a new art form. One can readily discern the influence of abstraction and , and it is principally due to the latter that he can claim to have started a new discipline.

His compositions show evident signs that he was well acquainted with the , though adding a novel and at the same time singular component by incorporating his own cultural baggage. Yet at once one could equally reach the conclusion that art in Philippines was not that far removed as one would have thought from Miró, Kandinsky or Picasso.

Besides the unique treatment of textile, one ought to make express mention of his treatment of colour, which he achieved with the help of machinery that only existed at the Art Protis workshops in Paris, proportioning a unique gamut of colours.

Spectators are often astounded to discover that these works are tapestries made with wool without any later intervention by the artist adding paint to the to achieve the miracle of colour, sensuality and beauty in his creations.

Telephone Calls was included in the exhibition held in New York at the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Foundation in 1974.