14/09/2025
🤍
The University of the Philippines
College of Fine Arts
mourns the passing
of our beloved mentor, colleague, and friend,
visual artist, Roberto B. Feleo (1954-2025).
Sir Bob, 1998-1999 Chairperson of the Department of Studio Arts, will be dearly missed. We are grateful to have had the privilege of being part of your life for more than three decades. 🤍
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Roberto “Bob” B. Feleo
(September 9 1954 - September 13, 2025)
The University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts (UPCFA) community grieves and bids farewell to a beloved colleague, the painter, sculptor, and art educator Roberto Bulatao Feleo.
Feleo will be fondly remembered as an artist and mentor who challenged generations of artists to explore local materials and processes and create contemporary works informed by national identity, indigenous history, and social commentary.
Feleo’s journey as an artist started with his early exposure to the works of folk artists and artisans (Contreras-Koterbay 2006) and his first years as a History undergraduate at the University of the Philippines. He started to join group exhibitions as early as 1978 and shifted to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts (major in Painting) at Philippine Women’s University in 1982.
As a visual artist, Feleo looked further beyond the Western-oriented academic traditions of both schools and found inspiration in the country’s layered history of cultural symbols: from pre-Hispanic mythology to Catholic folk religious icons to pop and historical figures. From these, he produced his Sapin-Sapin mixed media series across the waning years of Martial Law and later won the Grand Prize of the inaugural Metrobank Painting Competition in 1984.
As an art educator, Prof. Feleo, or Sir Bob as many affectionately called him, moreover proved that artistic practice is immensely enriched and expanded through mentoring, through his long record of service of teaching for nearly 45 years. He started as a resident visual arts instructor at the Philippine High School for the Arts in Mt. Makiling, Laguna from 1980 to 2007 and later taught at the PWU School of Fine Arts in Malate, Manila. He served as a faculty member of the College of Fine Arts in UP Diliman for over 35 years, starting as a Senior Lecturer in 1991, teaching the rudiments of materials, stagecraft, and sculptural technique. He earned his tenure by 1998 and served as the Chairperson of the Department of Studio Arts, continuing to teach until the last months of his life.
Feleo leaves behind a body of work that is central to the continuing story of Philippine contemporary art. His early Sapin-Sapin and Pintado (Painted One) series, starting in Hiraya Gallery and represented in the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan, won him further recognition as a Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Awardee in 1988. He would later on visit the Virginia Center for Creative Art in the United States on a fellowship (1988). The 1990s saw Feleo single handedly producing illustrations for The Soul Book (1991) and innovating on his exploration of folk spirituality, as seen in works from his Tau-Tao ancestors (1994) and virinas (vitrines or glass bell cases) series in 2009.
Feleo taught what he practiced. He was generous in sharing knowledge of his professional practice and mixed media techniques developed through time, such as the use of sawdust, powdered egg shells, and glue as a signature medium for his own sculpture and assemblage works. Remembered for his pragmatic and philosophical approach to art-making and wry yet humble demeanor in instruction, his own life and practice helped shape several generations of Philippine artists from all three schools, and beyond.
Farewell, Sir Bob: an artist of the country and beloved mentor to many. The UP College of Fine Arts will continue to celebrate your art and life within its hallowed halls.
texts courtesy of UP CFA Asst. Prof. Lisa Ito-Tapang
