BY CHRYSEE G. SAMILLANO
A collection of Filipino painter and printmaker Romeo Villalva Tabuena’s works is on display at Charlie’s Art Gallery in Italia Restaurant, Brgy. Mandalagan, Bacolod City starting September 21.
Tabuena was born in Iloilo City but moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 1955. However, he has always retained his Philippine citizenship.
He majored in painting at the University of the Philippines and studied architecture at the Mapua Institute of Technology in Manila. He continued his education by studying with American artist Will Barnet at the Art Students League in New York in 1952 and with Henri Goetz at the Acadèmie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1954.
Tabuena’s work typically consists of figures that are put together from subdued, monochromatic outlines despite his use of a wide variety of subject matter and materials. His aesthetic is frequently cubism-inspired, imposing fractal-like geometric patterning on recognizably geometric subjects.
While his earlier works retain a sense of translucency and fluid form and are frequently rendered in jewel toned colors and interlocking cubist influenced shapes, those from his later “Mexican” period are more opaque and have a stylized geometric quality that seems to cross reference the works of fellow Filipino artist Hernando Ocampo and the aesthetic of Mexican muralists.
By this time in his career, Tabuena had moved away from stark landscapes and pure modernism, and his figures had taken a more naturalistic rendering and emotional intimacy.
Numerous honors have been presented to Tabuena for his service, including the Philippines’ 2007 Presidential Merit Award. He attended his eight Biennial in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as the official representative of the Philippines in 1965.
He also had solo exhibitions in Manila in 1973, Mexico City in 1975, and Galeries Bleue in Manila in 1981. In 1995, the Instituto de Bellas Artes, Centro Cultural Ignacio sponsored a significant exhibition of his art in San Miguel de Allende.
Tabuena died on October 15, 2015 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
The collection of his artworks is being presented by Charlie’s Art Gallery, in cooperation with Galeria Lienzo.*
