Master engraver: A Filipino
Unlike Felix Hidalgo and Juan Luna, Figueroa’s legacy has been mere historical footnotes, his hard-won contributions forgotten and ignored.
Unlike Felix Hidalgo and Juan Luna, Figueroa’s legacy has been mere historical footnotes, his hard-won contributions forgotten and ignored.
Spanish culture center Instituto Cervantes in Manila presented a lecture on Melecio Figueroa, a pioneering Filipino artist renowned for his valuable contributions to both medallic and numismatic art in the Philippines.
Heritage advocate and researcher Gerard Wassily Clavecillas led a presentation that animated the life, career, works and enduring influences of Figueroa, the highly decorated scholar of the Spanish artistic tradition, an alum of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando (Madrid), and a long-established bastion and incubator of European creative potential.
The artist designed a series of coins widely used from 1903 up until the 1980s, from one peso to 50, 20, 10, five, centavo coins.
Art historian Fabian de la Rosa: “[Figueroa] is the only Filipino engraver who had developed the art of engraving from its purely artistic aspect with unsurpassed efficiency and enviable success.”
Figueroa was appointed chief engraver of the Manila Mint and was the islands’ foremost medallic artist.
The founding father of the art was one of the signatories of the first constitution in Asia, and became one of the most important Filipino Masters of the 19th century.
However, compared to his more famous peers, namely Juan Luna and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo, his legacy has since been mere historical footnotes, his hard-won contributions forgotten and ignored, save for a small side street in Arevalo with his name on it.
This event was organized in partnership with the Embassy of Spain in the Philippines and the PTC-Philippine Transmarine Carriers.
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