former– were of particular importance in this artistic journey, now in American soil. His long stay in Mexico served him “to realize that both ethnically and aesthetically, the Antilles are something apart from the continent.”8 If we look at the most important works from Colson while transiting these experiences of two decades of travel and study, a piece undoubtedly stands out: Merengue (1938), which we can imagine he painted when he returned to the Dominican Republic, albeit it is not known where exactly, as it was painted in that year that “Colson was in Mexico, Havana, Santo Domingo and Paris,”9 Ricardo Ramón Jarne points out. It would be worthwhile to think that it is an evocative piece of reencountering “the native country,” where unlike a composition still strongly inspired by his Cubist background and the importance of the pictorial space as a structuring box –as evident in the series Catarsis–, on this occasion the author seems to be opening a gateway to popular culture unprecedented in Dominican art. Referring to Merengue and other later works on the same subject, Sara Hermann said that the way of revealing the customs and actions of Dominicans, gives the scene “the character of a national stamp.”10 This piece was a milestone in those years, however it did not mark a period in Colson’s immediate artistic itinerary, and we would have to wait some time to appreciate the artist in this dimension of solid creation on topics of popular culture. Another novelty in his artwork was his treatment of the male body. The unprejudiced way he represented it, especially naked, gave way to an important trend in the national art scene during those years in Dominican modernity; with its various shades bringing a strongly liberating, progressive-minded gaze on the representation of the subjects –both male and female– along with the works of Jaime Colson and Celeste Woss y Gil. Darío Suro and Yoryi Morel, on the other hand, formed themselves in the local scene and built a universe of references with a visual language that announced a path toward the vernacular. Latter in La Vega and the former in Santiago de los Caballeros. They not only showed another facet of modern Dominican diversity in terms of their own territorial origins, but also provided a look into the 8 María Ugarte. “Jaime Colson: su vida y su obra”. Jaime Colson. Palette Publishing Inc. 1996 pp.22 9 Ricardo Ramón Jarne. “Jaime Colson en el Museo Bellapart”. Colson Errante. (Catálogo) Museo Bellapart, 20 de noviembre de 2008. pp 46 10 Sara Hermann. “De códigos y merengues….” ¡Merengue! visualrhythms/ritmosvisuales Centro cultural León Jiménez/ El Museo del Barrio (Catálogo) Septiembre 2006-Enero 2007 pp. 65
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heartland, –toward the countryside and rural life– also toward a work with light that marked a time for a new observation of national realities. Darío Suro experiments with a palette that is veiled by the effect of rain, a downpour, on public squares in Lluvia en el Mercado de La Vega (1940) and on palms trees as in Paisaje de lluvia (1940). From the harshness of tropical storms, the artist evoked a very personal treatment of the image that impacts the spectator and motivates reflection. From nature the artist is a provocateur of sublime images –artistically– that can generate multifaceted versions from popular imaginary like when the layman says “it rains, but never clears.” Meanwhile Yoryi Morel, identified by his folkloric and tropical versions, employs light with colorful intensity, making the imagination a means to select the motif and the fragments of reality that define environments and spaces of a visual identity that stands out in the modern diversity of artistic trends in Dominican art. The expression of a visual nationality is expressed from his native universe with deep emotional exaltation, which customized his landscapes through the gestures of his brushwork and the seduction of his palette. In that sense, Paula Gómez examining his work offers some clues that focus on dealing with light, but stressing “its gradations and qualities of color. In Paisaje (1927) and Sin título (1928) one can appreciate the interest of the artist in reflecting the changes light confers to the landscape at different hours of the day.” The author also refers to “fillings and textures,” specifically “Rancho de framboyán (1938) is a vivid example of this.”11 Its essential contribution is in its vibrant nature where the subject selected is not lost in the landscape but is the protagonist. Rural peasant life and the streets of suburban neighborhoods in the works of Yoryi Morel turned nature into pictorial matter for art and this meant a great “enrichment of the inventory from which plastic creation works.”12 It also meant a substantial contribution to the history of Dominican and Antillean art due to the special significance nature and landscape will have in the configuration of its visual processes over time, in the context of Caribbean insularity. 13 11 Paula Gómez. Por los caminos de nuestra expresión. (Catálogo) Museo Bellapart, República Dominicana, agosto, 2006 pp. 8 12 Gerardo Mosquera. “Acerca del paisaje y el retrato” Exploraciones en la plástica cubana. Editorial Letras Cubanas, La Habana, 1983 pp. 363 13 Cfr. Yolanda Wood. Islas del Caribe: naturaleza-arte-sociedad. Editorial UH y CLACSO, La Habana, 2012
School, Biennale and visual sign The School of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo was created in 1942, and in that same year the national biennials of visual arts started, the first of their kind in the insular Caribbean. The presence of Spanish artists who brought new insights to the process of creation and training in the Dominican Republic and the influence of the avantgarde trends of international art they and Dominican artists living outside the country (in Europe and in the United States) contributed, marked the panorama where the emergence of the institutional, official field, of the visual arts was inserted. The successive generations of graduates from that school conducted a penetration into the Dominican context with great artistic versatility, resulting in a practice of decentering, as the observation of national realities implied an intellectual intention and conscious re-reading of its history, now observed with a double sense of introspection-retrospection and especially with an inquisitive will to establish new connections and links with the social and cultural space of the artists’ time. The most novel in this sense was the way Dominican art broadened its expressive possibilities and avenues of exploration, dissociating from traditional resources and venturing into new artistic versions of forms and ways of doing within the notions of visual modernity. It is not often that an art school can show such interesting results. Marianne de Tolentino says with precision: “the arrival of European immigrants gave a strong modernist impulse to the Dominican Republic... we find the same rejection to European assimilation, but the awareness that the vernacular identity must be transmuted and travel through new stylistic paths.”14 As mentioned, the in-coming exodus of a representative group of Spaniards, including leading figures of the artistic movement in their country due to the left’s defeat in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Nazism, constituted a force of ingenuity and creativity that would be the basis for the foundation of the School of Fine Arts; within a larger project in favor of a policy guided by the government of Leónidas Trujillo, that with marked signs of demagoguery, was projected into the fields of culture and the arts that in the words of Sara Hermann “handled the sphere of culture in 14 De Tolentino, Marianne (1996) “Arte dominicano es del Caribe”. En Último Arte. (Santo Domingo) pp. 10
a utilitarian way... adapting the cultural production system to his specific purposes of coercion and domination.”15 It’s interesting to see how at the center of these institutions was forged an active generation of creators who built a hard nucleus for Dominican visual arts. Art group affiliations that marked important moments for the exhibition of art and its international presence were also formed. And the process was linked to very significant movements in the field of literature and especially poetry as revelation of a dynamic intellectual thought where the visual arts also had a part to play. Certain essences capable of expressing the national way of being involved artists socially because they understood that what was changing was not only the substance of art, but rather its function and its ability to dialogue with other areas of culture. So the relationship became more and more transversal between visual and other artistic expressions, and between them and society. At the same time, and as a result of the situation of national instability during the years in which the hegemonic and warlord profiles of Trujillo raged, Dominican artists left for Europe and the United States –some as exiles– where they came in contact with trends and artistic groups, and consequently generated important dynamics of change within the national art scene. It was a double process of crossroads of influences, from inside the country with the presence of Spanish artists and newly created institutions, and from the outside, promoted by those who were abroad, that resulted –in the historical framework of art– in a dimension of change and renewal of great importance between the 1940s and 1960s. It was an essential moment by the way the bases for competitiveness were established in the field of the arts through national biennials, which in turn spurred criticism and debate. These institutions, which have remained active until today, have generated since then –and even today– areas of controversy, above all in so far as they had to adapt to the new era of visual arts, an undoubtedly complex process, especially at the level of calls for the biennial and the prizes awarded. However, winning pieces from those years, such as Eligio Pichardo’s La muerte del chivo (1948), marked an increasingly freer use and management of visual 15 Sara Hermann (1991) Política cultural estatal y sistema institución-arte en la República Dominicana de 1960 a 1980: una aproximación al tema. Tesis de Licenciatura. Universidad de La Habana pp. 5
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