Roberto Chabet, RIP

From Artforum.com:

"Roberto Chabet, known as the father of Conceptual art in the Philippines, died on Tuesday, April 30, in a hospital in Manila. Born in 1937, Chabet studied architecture and graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in 1961; in the same year, he had his first solo exhibition at the Luz Gallery. He would later go on to become the founding director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1969, which showcases all aspects of Filipino art, including dance, visual art, and cinema. At the CCP, where Chabet also served as curator from 1967-70, he established the Thirteen Artists award, part of his aim of nurturing young artists whose work shows a “recentness and a turning away from the past.” He is well regarded for his own experimental explorations of space in a variety of media, especially during his time as leader of the Conceptual art group Shop 6 in the 1970s. Chabet was the recipient of the Republic Cultural Heritage Award and the Araw Ng Maynila Award for the Visual Arts in 1972, as well as the Centennial Honor for the Arts in 1998. His work is represented in the collections of the National Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, and Culture Center in the Philippines. Recently, an entire collection of the artist’s work from the last fifty years was digitized and became part of the Asia Art Archive, which is available online."