Background
Isabelo Tampinco was born on November 19, 1850, in Manila, Philippines. He was the oldest of three sons of Leoncio Tampinco and his first wife Justa de Lacandola.
1908
1918
1918
1918
Isabelo Tampinco was born on November 19, 1850, in Manila, Philippines. He was the oldest of three sons of Leoncio Tampinco and his first wife Justa de Lacandola.
Isabelo Tampinco was orphaned at fourteen, and his aunt took him under her roof. His industry enabled him to pursue his artistic learnings in the Escuela de Artes y Oficios then under the direction of Spanish teachers. He came under Don Agustin Saez and Don Lorenzo Rocha and was at one time or another in the same class with Jose Rizal and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo as he went to school quite late.
After graduating, Isabelo Tampinco began working in earnest. It was in carving figures of saints and decorating churches with fancy and artistic designs that he excelled. The creative hand of the artist was always present in his carvings and decorations, whether they be on doors, pulpits, or altars of churches. Unfortunately, the fine examples of his art were destroyed by war. However, the interior or facade of the Manila Cathedral in cement, done from a mold of molave he carved, can still be admired. The high relief work on the molave or maulawin door of Santo Domingo Church had always some new quality to attract the connoisseur and so also the altar of this church. The main altars of the Laoag Church, Ilocos Norte, the Mangaldan Church, Pangasinan, and that of the Dominican Church in Baguio are some of his minor works.
His greatest achievement, however, consisted of the woodcarvings he made for San Ignacio Church, Intramuros, Manila. This was the monument of his art to which he devoted six solid years of his creative life and during which period he employed some fifty to sixty workers and woodcarvers at one time to bring to сompletion this piece of artistic conception within that period. With the exception of the pulpit which was done jointly by Crispulo Hocson, his brother-in-law, and Manuel Flores, the images of San Ignacio de Loyola and the Sagrada Corazon de Jesus done by Manuel Flores, the image of La Inmaculada Concepción done by C. Hocson, all the other figures of saints, the main altar, the fluted columns, the vaulted ceiling, the station cycle of fourteen pieces, and all other carved objects and works were accomplished by Tampinco.
It can indeed be said, without desecrating the memory of the other Filipino artists who assisted the master hand, that in the San Ignacio Church Tampinco left a monument worthy of any land, in this most splendidly carved interior of the Far East. And there is certainly no doubt as to the propriety of one critic calling the Jesuit Church as Tampico's masterpiece, although the original plans were prepared by Roxas and Saez, the improvements that he made were so excellent and so original that the plan, as it was finally executed, may be said to be his own. It can be added that when San Ignacio Church was completed, woodcarving as art reached its zenith of development in the Islands during the Spanish period and the expressive talent of the woodcarver its epitome. For after its completion no structure ever excelled or equaled its interior in its exquisite conception, ornate execution, and even in its artistic unity.
Native artistic talent also found expression in the carved frames of pictures and paintings which were coming in vogue during the second half of the nineteenth century. Such was the growing interest in, and later appreciation for, carved frames that customers were willing to pay many times the cost of the canvass in order to own the kind that suited their taste. In this work, Tampinco rivaled the woodcarvers of Paete, Laguna. One such work enclosed a painting of Governor-General Blanco y Erenas done by Juan Lama.
Tampinco at first established a small shop on a narrow street now known as Palma. In 1890, after the termination of his job in the San Ignacio Church, he moved his atelier on what is now called R. Hidalgo Street. From then on he had a prosperous business, except when this was interrupted during the Revolution. He was appointed professor of woodcarving in the Escuela de Bellas Artes and was serving for eight years when the Revolution broke out in 1896. Thus he found himself obliged to volunteer in the Spanish military service.
During the American regime, when a department in woodcarving was created in the Philippine School of Arts and Trades (now Technological University of the Philippines), he accepted an appointment as a teacher of carving on June 25, 1908 and served for almost two years until April 1, 1910, when he resigned. In 1914, he formed a partnership with Graciano Nepomuceno, a woodcarver, establishing their shop on Evangelista Street. This association knew some business prosperity, and the partners established a branch shop on Arlegui Street putting up a sign "Taller de Modelado y Vaciado de Nepomuceno y Tampinco." This partnership was, however, dissolved in 1922. All along he had been working with his sons, Angel and Vidal, and the designs of the decorative woodcarving in Malacañang, the Ayuntamiento, and the Ateneo de Manila, all in Manila, were some of the joint work of father and sons.
He brought into practice his concept of style and this was not late either. Prior to the Exposición Regional de Filipinas in 1895, the incorporation of native elements in decorative art was not given serious thought either in theory or practice. In that year, however, Tampinco exhibited several architectural plans and models which became known later as the Tampincos style. He employed bunga trunks for columns, anahaw and banana leaves for details, and salá for arches and facades. In the Universal Exposition of St. Louis in 1904, he offered elaborations of his ideas by using as motif the coat of arms of the Philippines, in one instance, with the castle removed and employing in its stead the anahaw leaf which to him fittingly symbolizes the Orient.
Among the sculptural works he made for individuals are the following: Ntra. Sra. de Consolación, for Mrs. Mauro Prieto; La Purisima Concepción; Ntra. Sra. de Lourdes, a woodcarving made for the Benedictines, Manila; La Purisima, a woodcarving after Murillo, for Rosario Renato of Vigan, I.S.; Santo Niño de Cebu, a woodcarving for Pelagio Veneracion of San Miguel de Mayumo, Bulakan; and San Ladislao Rey, for Fidel Villanueva of Vigan, I.S.
Isabelo Tampinco was an outstanding prolific sculptor and woodcarver. His works received much recognition. At thirty the earliest recognition of his work was made by Lieutenant-General Domingo Moriones y Morillo when he was awarded on February 20, 1880 a medal of civil merit for sculptural works. Other awards soon followed: he received a silver medal and a diploma for exhibiting a carved wooden cover of a set of Fr. Manuel Blanco's Flora de Filipinas, the so-called grand edition, which was sent to the King of Spain in the centenary celebration of Santa Teresa de Jesus, on October 15, 1882. He merited a silver medal and a diploma on September 18, 1887, in the Exposición General de las Islas Filipinas held in Madrid. He was honored with a gold medal on December 9, 1888, for works shown in the Exposición Universal de Barcelona. He became again the recipient of a gold medal on July 24, 1895, from the Exposición Regional de Filipinas, Manila, a medal of honor of the second class with a silver medal award for architectural exhibits, and a gold medal for exhibiting Shrine with Wooden Crucifix, painted by Felix Martinez, the carved frame and motif being his creation, by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, United States, in 1904.
Style to Tampinco is the only feature that distinguishes truly great decorative works, a style that varies according to the country, a style that differentiates one country from another in its conception, line, and details.
To Tampinco the creation of a local style, even a pure one, is not a bizarre idea, nor an ideal to be disdained. This style may be created by the adoption of one already in existence, with all the variance and modifications which conditions of life and aesthetic taste have produced, to the end afterward of serving as a basis for the creation of a new style. His dream was the exploitation of native elements with the end in view of developing something national in art.
Quotations: "Ornamentation should not merely respond to the caprice of the artist but should have a pattern and order which should constitute a style of its own, and which style, in turn, should fit in perfectly and harmoniously with the whole."
Isabelo Tampinco was a co-founder of the Centro de Escultores and its treasurer during the presidency of Juan Flameno and Mariano Sianinco de Guzman and an active member since the society's formation on December 5, 1909.
Isabelo Tampinco was married to Victoria Jocson. The marriage produced nine children.
