Page 355 - Arte e Historia
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Art and History
at the Banco popular dominicano visual arts collection
the skills of a muralist they will use to make beautiful their Sellers» and becomes virtually an obligation to include
buildings. In 1941 he started his first mural in the Masonic her paintings on the firsts visual arts national exhibitions
Logia Cuna de America. In 1942 he was appointed profes- held between 1940 and 1942.
sor at the Fine Arts National School, working tireless as a
professor, drawer, mural and easel’s painter with an inter- «Male Nude,» oil/canvas, 112.5x78 cm., 1941. In 1943,
national projection, while holding his Dominican condi- Rafael Díaz Niese, wrote: «Celeste Woss y Gil re-engages in
tion as well as his Spaniard citizenship. He lives in Santo such a commanding way, that it proof to be hard to deny her the
Domingo until beginning of the 1950 decade, when he honour seat she deserves (…). «A magnificent talent, together
leaves to Mexico, travels back and forth to different coun- with her outstanding pictorial temperament and a spirited cour-
tries but returns often to Santo Domingo. In 1981, the age served by an impeccable technic; offers today an authentic
Modern Art Museum holds retrospective exhibition «Vela painting: beautiful nudes and vigorous portraits (…) In short:
Zanetti Dominican art works, 1939-1981,» organized by broad art in which the figures are treated as if they were huge
the José Caro Álvarez Foundation. pictorial blocs (…) it’s been always possible to notice on her works
the lion nail (…) on her canvas, she achieves an expression, a
«Lovers,»oil and ducco/papier-mache, 42x57 cm., 1947. tone, –allow me to shuffle the terms this way– so austere and
The painting focuses on a mulatto couple nested by the vigorous (…) very distinctly, a male nude, carry Renaissance’s
embrace, love and distress. They are seated on the yel- reminiscences of the upmost sober elegance. The modernity on
lowish soil mixed up with the horizon. These are two big the making does not affect at all the precision and juiciness of the
bodies. He is tilted with bare arms and feet costumes, his artwork. It is praiseworthy!».
head leaning. As for the woman, we hardly see her body,
although her face expresses the visibility of a lover who Gilberto Hernández Ortega. (Baní, 1924). He start-
hugs, kisses and gives comfort.
ed his artistic studies at the Celeste Woss y Gil’s Acad-
Celeste Woss y Gil. Around the time thousands of emy, then was transfered, with all his classmates, to the
Fine Arts National School. Graduated in 1945, holds his
Spaniards and Jewish political refugees arrived; the Woss first individual exhibition in 1946, at the time he replac-
y Gil Academy reached its 10 years of a refreshing teach- es the Spaniard surrealist Eugenio Fernandez Granell as
ing activity for the benefit of its young men and women the vignettist in «La Poesía Sorprendida» as well as in the
students. The Academy was enjoying a semi-official sup- identically called movement whose militants follow the
port, therefore was able to celebrate annual exhibitions motto: «Poetry with the Universal Mankind»
showing their students works, sometimes including the
professors’ art pieces. Doña Celeste, as she was called, The first individual showing by this artist from Bani
used to multiply herself as professor, as a declared militant was described by Franklin Mieses Burgo as follows: «At the
of the feminist movement, as a partner in a very singular Fine Arts National Gallery, during the first days of December,
marriage and, specially, as a woman artist immersed on 1946, our vignettist Gilberto Hernández Ortega had his showing.
cozy atelier. To her studio used to go regularly the nudes The critics spoke favorably of his qualities since he revealed, on
and portrait’s models who, at that time already enjoyed the magic sky of his paintings, a poetic reality of creativity and re-
certain stylistic and freed opulence, as well as the quo- fined tenderness, as well as a thorough knowledge and technic com-
tidian themes, exceptional on her productions. In 1939 mand, regarding naturally, the full confidence on his drawing and
she takes part on The Painting World Exhibition in New the rigorous color’s attribute. Gilberto Hernández Ortega is, un-
York, obtaining Honourable Medal for her piece «Plug doubtedly, a milestone among the most recent pictorial promotion
in the Dominican Republic and we foretell on him, for this and
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