Few remember him today, but his work, despite the grime of over half-a-century of neglect, still shines through and delights. I had gone to school (Don Bosco, Mandaluyong) not knowing that the relief of St. John Bosco on our high school facade was Monti’s handiwork. So too with the image of Christ on the edifice where my mother taught medicine – the UERM building on Aurora Boulevard (originally a school for girls). Monti, in fact specialized in architectural reliefs that Filipino sculptors would later on create for ’60s buildings like the QC city hall and the Insular Life building in Makati (relief by Napoleon Abueva, architecture by Cesar Concio).
Monti’s contributions to Philippine art and architecture started much earlier. Francesco Riccardo Monti came to Manila via the Americas to escape fascism in pre-war Italy. Born into an artistic family of funerary and architectural sculptors, the young Monti quickly established himself as a sculptor with great potential (after graduating from the Royal Academy of Breza in Milan) before events took away his chance to move forward so he sailed to the land of promise. On the ship to New York, however, he was redirected to an even more promising land far to the east. Somehow he managed to get a referral for work in Cebu in the Philippines but Manila was his final stop and Monti made the Pearl of the Orient his home for the next three decades.
He justified his move to the tropics in a letter to a friend. (This correspondence is one of the many intriguing artifacts displayed – among numerous elegant photographs of Monti’s work – recently exhibited at the University of Santo Tomas Museum. The excerpt below, along with much of the information in this article, is culled from the research for that exhibit curated by Professor Boots Herrera of the University of the Philippines.
Monti wrote home shortly after arriving in the islands. "Many Europeans believe that the Philippines still needs to be civilized. One must tell these people that there is much to learn from the Philippines, especially in terms of honesty and sincerity! The passion the people have for music and the arts is surprising. Here you find that the most modest workers are capable of reading the most complicated construction designs with surprising ease.
"They work with alacrity and buildings are built swiftly and are more beautiful than they are (in Europe). All government buildings are modeled after the architecture of the ancient Greece civilization and are neat, simple and majestic. This further proves that there are sensible minds that plan, manage and build – most leaders here have a passion for the arts. It is the undeniable and sacrosanct truth.
"Manila opened her arms to me and has given me my work and fulfillment."
Monti may as well be talking about another country compared to today’s Philippine reality but that’s another story altogether. Monti quickly impressed local architects like Juan Arellano who took over the work of the early American designers. Monti created the sculptural embellishments for Arellano’s Art Deco Metropolitan Theater. He followed this up with the intriguing relief of muses for the ultra-modern Meralco headquarters on San Marcelino (both structures still stand – just barely). More work followed, mostly embellishment for a flurry of a civic building the government undertook in the hubris of the commonwealth. Sadly this golden age of Philippine architecture was halted by the war.
During the war Monti was, like many expatriates, put in camps. He was released, close to the war’s end, from Fort Bonifacio through the intervention of the Papal Nuncio. After the war Monti, like the rest of the country’s traumatized citizens, slowly picked up the pieces. He turned his creative energies to schools and churches.
In 1947, Monti created the sculptural relief for the PMA building in Baguio. A few years later he completed four huge panels in the lobby of the FEU auditorium (recently awarded a heritage conservation prize by UNESCO). At the turn of the half century Monti started work on 15 large cast concrete statues atop the UST building representing the three virtues and great classical European thinkers, philosophers and writers. He completed this backbreaking work in 1953. In that year, too, he was his busiest, completing a slew of sculptures for the famous (and only modern-era) Philippine International Fair at the Luneta (which I featured two years ago in this column).
In between all of this work Monti found time to teach (Fine Arts at the UST), help establish the Art Association of the Philippines, do commercial designs for architectural pre-cast embellishments (for the House of Pre-Cast) as well as be involved in the Italian community.
In 1954, Monti completed the reliefs for the new Santo Domingo church designed by architect Jose Zaragoza. Many more schools commissioned him, ending in 1958 with a commission for the Don Bosco Technical Institute in Mandaluyong. It was to be his last creation. Monti died from injuries suffered in a car accident on August 11, 1958. He was to have received the Papal Order of St. Gregory for his service to the church. He also was, by then, acknowledged as having contributed as much to the state and its people.
Monti, like many artists, artisans and architects before him – Italian, American and Filipino – has contributed much to our built heritage of the last century. Our lives and identities have been shaped in the structures and settings they created. Today’s creative professionals and artists should be able to access this heritage to ground their own development and continue the much-interrupted evolution of our architecture, art and city-building.
Monti, 70 years ago, said that we were passionate about art and we had leaders who were possessed of sensible minds that plan, manage and build. This access to our built heritage is impossible if we continue to destroy our architectural legacy.