Roberto Rodríguez Chabet

Background

Roberto Chabet was born on March 29, 1937 in Manila, Philippines.

Education

Chabet studied architecture at the University of Santo Tomas where he graduated in 1961.

Career

Roberto was a teacher and a mentor as well as an artist and sculptor in his own right, and his conceptual art installations in the 60s and 70s were considered as renegade works. Roberto had his first exhibition at the Luz Gallery in 1961. He was the founding museum director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and served as curator thee from 1967 - 1970. He also initiated the first 12 Artists Awards, giving recognition to young artists who were working in new ways, turning away from traditional modes of art-making. He organised landmark exhibitions featuring work by young artist throughout his career.

Roberto led the 1970s conceptual art group called Shop 6 and taught for over 30 years at the UP College of Fine Arts, where he espoused an art practice that gave precedence to idea over form. Since the 1970s, he has been organizing landmark exhibitions featuring works by young artists. In 2011, there was a yearlong series on his work, "Roberto Chabet: Fifty Years", curated by the Ateneo Art Gallery in Manila in partnership with a number of important galleries across Southeast Asia, including Osage in Hong Kong and ICA in Singapore. He died 30 April 2013.

Achievements

• Roberto “Bobby” Chabet is widely acknowledged as the father of Philippine conceptual art

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Piero

  • Shanghai

  • Apple Painting Lesson

  • Cargo and Decoy

  • Untitled

  • Pier and Ocean

  • Bakawan

  • Observatory 2

  • Untitled

  • Complete & Unabridged

  • Russian Painting

Views

Chabet described his pieces as "creatures of memory" and himself as their "custodian." His works are the result of a process of unraveling of fixed notions about art and meaning. Highly allegorical, his drawings, collages, sculptures and installations question modernity.

Personality

Often perceived as too upfront and candid, Chabet readily spoke his mind out and showed a disdain for false accolades and the conventions dictated by players in the art world. If anything, he was uncompromising in his quest for creation and his search for the sublime.

Connections

Chabet was single and had no children.

Sister:

Carmen Mesina

Sister:

Milagros Garcia