resources, a bolder look on the context of Dominicanhood and the use of the trope to open the work to a greater choice of meanings. Pichardo, as Paul Giudicelli, built new iconographies which proved an important trend amongst the artists who explored a variety of artistic media within the options of modern language. It was from the ideogrammatic drawings and petroglyphs of the Taíno aboriginal that Giudicelli began his experimentation with the evocative traces of a silent and indecipherable memory. Textures and hues seemed to allude to the telluric world of an ancestry that by being primordial became visual sign in the artist’s hands. Dominican painting’s look into this past had its origins in the works of Luis Desangles and José Vela Zanetti, but Giudicelli was a pioneer in the reappropriation of the Taíno universe. He was not coming from representational allegory, as his predecessors, but from the critical rereading of references with a modern syntax. His work developed “within an ethno-cultural theme where the pre-Columbian roots and subsequent black influences, so rooted in our popular rituals, continually surfaced.”16 Popular culture acquired essential weight in the new artistic proposals, which is a legacy of utmost importance to contemporary Dominican art. It was a deeper investigative process on social and anthropological aspects. Paula Gómez, who studies these artists, has said that “never before have aspects of popular culture been activated in such a deep way in the arts under conditions of autonomy.” She further affirms that: “This is the first link in an authenticating chain of content carrying issues, which will act as an invariant category of Dominican art, with possible moments of ups and downs, as is characteristic of a region in real artistic formation.”17 The magical dimension of art acquires significant profiles in the work of Ada Balcácer, penetrating new areas of popular sensibility to engage with them in an artistic dialogue, as in the work of Gaspar Mario Cruz. In her piece Llanto del baquiní (1956), she not only revalued wood as sculptural material, but did so with an organic and ancestral force that upheld the African legacy within itself and that exists
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16 Miller, Jeannette. Paul Giudicelli. Sobreviviente de una época oscura. Santo Domingo. 1983. pp.34
in Dominican culture. The art critic Jeanette Miller also highlights the so-called “poetic mythologies” of Gilberto Hernández Ortega noticeable in the piece Composición en Azul (1958), which was awarded the second prize for painting at the 9th National Biennial. She also highlights the artistic personalities of Marianela Jiménez and Clara Ledesma, who brought about an innovative look at the female figure in Dominican art. Artists had to find the key of their expression, the best way to go about it. They tried to find a starting point that would also be a turning point as the new trend, and this is what happened with the following graduating classes of the School of Fine Arts. However, in order to establish the basis that could create that national visual identity, it was necessary to “extract” certain essences from reality. The symbol dominated the creative scene and most significant was its conversion into visual sign for the way in which references acquired the connotation of attributes loaded with meaning. In that context, Jeannette Miller points that “during the 1940s the characteristics that defined the Trujillo dictatorship contributed both in painting and in literature, to make the use of symbols and abstractions necessary to express concerns.” A situation that would get worse in the 1950s, as she points out, due to the political tensions and prevailing persecutions that took place. “The rise of abstract art in Santo Domingo is patterned by a repressive atmosphere that leads artists to spiritualist dimensioning as an escape from the grotesque contradiction man-geography in a lush landscape where people were either killed by force or hunger.”18 Following Jeannette Miller, we could ask whether abstraction was a strategy of social protest, of challenging the circumstances, or a way to undermine censorship. The construction of the symbol, one perceives processes of selection and synthesis that are ways of “extracting,” of separating through intellectual operations, the parts from the whole, of isolating to give meaning or essentialist notions. It was a very complex process at the psycho-social level because it wanted to transcend the superficial and picturesque to build other meaningful images, to overcome its own representational and realistic tradition. The process was intense and complex; the artists went through many influences in the process of finding their true artistic selves. Fernando Peña Defilló began his formative stage in a
Dominican institute, la Escuela de Bellas Artes, that had emerged without the overtones of the nineteenth century’s academicism and under the influence of Spanish and native authors inspired by the early 20th century’s modernist movements. He attended there between 1949 and 1951. From his loyalty to the vocation and with concerns he learned from his teachers, he began his path of new searches abroad. As for so many other artists who came from far away from the renowned international art centers, the trip constituted an entry into new artistic horizons. His destination was the other side of the Atlantic, what seemed obvious, as the European metropolis was the reference of a criterion of cultural value that equated –supposedly– the hegemonic colonial power centers with those of art. France acquired importance, in the face of the cutting-edge developments that were occurring, as a destination for studies and artistic experiences for the creators from the Hispanic Caribbean. But during the first half of the 20th century, Mexico, with its mural art, graphic techniques and processes of cultural democratization, was another interesting choice for some Caribbean artists; in parallel to the most recognized Western European art trends. Darío Suro lived there several years; he imported major influences from the art of that country (Mexico) to the Dominican context, which marked a change from his previous work. But from the second half of the last century, the United States –particularly New York– emerged as center of art in this hemisphere and gradually on an international scale, that created another pole of attraction for Caribbean and Latin American artists who were directed toward its centers of training, galleries and museums, motivated by its systems of circulation and art market. It is interesting to see how other important interconnections happened there, as it can be appreciated in the work of Tito Cánepa, whose link to Rufino Tamayo´s school in that city assumed a well-defined Mexican reference, with a special influence from murals. The dynamics of the artistic proposals made and projected from the United States radiated with intensity in the art world; “immediately after WWII the New York School emerged with vigor, creating influences that gradually reached Europe, thus reversing the traditional westward march of civilization.”19 Fernando Peña Defilló opted to
travel to Europe in 1951, spending more time in Spain. He was there when debates within European modernity sparked by the influence of the artistic currents coming from the United States were taking place. At the age of twenty-two, he was in that place and time where the borders of art were crossed and the edges of a new artistic sensibility were becoming permeable. Travel, time and time again, placed artists from this part of the world in similar historicoartistic junctures. This scenario must have intensified Peña-Defilló’s search into emerging notions that gave special value, in the pictorial sense, to artistic matter putting emphasis on the autonomous qualities of plastic expression and their subjective freedoms. With thick layers of pigments and pasty textures on the canvas, was emphasized the separation between the figurative and the abstract, visual language categories born from the avant-garde movements of the 20th century. An expressive capacity of the creative forces and formal freedoms of artistic matter defined the language of informalist abstraction emerging in Europe. In Dominican art, some artists had started an abstractionist journey and others had returned using abstract ways learned in Europe. Jeannette Miller puts it as follows: “Emerging artists in those years were those who developed Dominican abstract art. These include Eligio Pichardo (19301984), Paul Giudicelli (1921-1965), Domingo Liz (1931), Fernando Peña Defilló (1928), Silvano Lora (1931), Gaspar Mario Cruz (1925), Antonio Toribio (1934) and Ada Balcácer (1930) [...] Silvano Lora and Fernando Peña Defilló mingle with the El Paso group in Madrid, managing to stand out within informalist production in Spain. On the island –and at the same time as Paul Giudicelli– Eligio Pichardo, employing a modern language produced geometric expressionist work that never completely abandoned figure painting.”20 For his part, Silvano Lora had his first personal exhibition in Santo Domingo in 1951. His work –characterized by experimentation– acquired from his Parisian years and his contacts with the abstract orientation, a path of artistic interests always aimed towards inquiry and a highly diversified use of plastic resources. Informalism introduced him from his youth to the value of the surface, matter, and the power of painting as a mass and as gesture. In any case,
17 Paula Gómez. Análisis sígnico-visual del sistema de altares vuduistas y su apropiación en el discurso artístico de Jorge Severino. Tesis de Licenciatura. Tutora: Yolanda Wood. La Habana, 1993 Inédito pp.
18 Miller, Jeannette. Arte dominicano, artistas españoles y modernidad pp. 29
19 Chipp, Herschel B. (1995) Teorías del arte contemporáneo. Fuentes artísticas y opiniones críticas. Ediciones Akal. Madrid. España. Pág. 533
20 Jeannette Miller Arte dominicano, artistas españoles y modernidad. República Dominicana, 1996 pp. 31
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