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Danilo De los Santos
«Los Apóstoles,» sculpture in mahogany, more than The artist himself confessed that doing it was a sort of
three meters wide, carved by the end of 1980s, is formed by relief during his breaks after the sculpting job arduous
three vertical bodies extracted from the same log. It was ex- hours. The pictorial work was the concrete communion
hibited in Santo Domingo in 1970, and Santiago in 1972. with various dissipations: His beloved Azuan woman,
Rosa María García Bidó, who multiplied him with their
The artist, «just by chance found the log in a warehouse children; the soaked cigarette with coffee flavor or the
at the exact moment when a group of workers armed with an good wine shared with friends all that perhaps serve as
axe were starting to break it into pieces. Of a surprising qual- well to dissipate nostalgia.
ity, the old and perfect Creole mahogany’s trunk was already
divided into two vertical pieces. He bought it immediately and The presence of pictorial works on the Popular’s
his weight was such, that at the time it was laid at his house collection is numerous: paintings with or without date,
courtyard, the cement floor broke. He worked the piece in the of various themes: women with turbans, girls with but-
garden. Just to rough it down took him three months. The two terflies, still lives, angels with star-filled skies, landscapes
figures in the trunk transmitted to the sculptor the name’s apos- with yellow, red, green trees and with shacks… Tens of
tolic message.» (María Ugarte, cit. op, p.101). different paintings with reiterative format and approach,
but never repetitive.
«The Lady,» carved mahogany/polychrome, 129 cm.
high, 1988. «Menina,» carved mahogany/polychrome, «The Turban’s Lady,» oil/canvas, 32x25 inch., no date v
170 cm. high, no date. «Meninas,» carved mahogany/poly- «Maternity and Oranges,» acrylic/canvas, 32x25 inch., no date
chrome, 52 inch high, 1990. Sculpted in different dates, v «Green Trees and a Red Tree,» acrylic/canvas v «Houses Be-
they offer linguistic unity in the dialogue between the tween Flamboyanes v «Blue, Plentiful Grove.» v «Girls under
wood au natural and the polychrome resource that coat the Rain,» acrylic/canvas, 48x28 inch., no date v «Merchant
the slender forms («The Lady» and «Meninas»), offering Women.» v «Girls Face.» v «Little Flamboyanes with Yellow
a seat composure to the third «Menina». The pieces show Sky v «Two White Horses and Two Girls.» v «Fragmented Still
outstanding coiffure crowning their heads with dual faces, Life.» v «Women and Girls Line.»
like novel and objective mystery’s masks. The cylindrical,
short, raised and non-repeated forms, «correspond to a job Artists Confluences,
that served the artist as a divertimento and was proof of Generations and Imagery
his dialogue with wood. (María Ugarte, cit.op. page 150). 1990-2001
Hieratic solemnity, only broken by the chromatic decora-
tive head-dress, subscribes, conscious or unconsciously. In the plastic arts collection conformed by the Banco
The new Dominican figurative, dumping the linguistic Popular Dominicano there is a lineal confluence of artists
and thematic that coincided, at the beginning of 1970s, and generations that, in the Dominican art case, signal the
with the painter and Master Fernando Peña Defilló. XX century ascendant history, with representative evidenc-
es of that initiated with the XXI century.
The still life and the celestial iconography portraying
angels and human absorbed characters; are part of an ex- The artists, and the generations they are linked to, and
tensive pictorial production new phase, twice indulgent: the pieces they subscribe during the 1900-2001 period, sum-
for the artist himself and for the audience, who enjoys marize many different imageries as referent to the forms
the kindness of not disturbing works. No social drama, and the ranges of our insular republic; forms and ranges
or expressionist scenes or affected landscapes out of dissi- which are endless in its variables encompassing the day’s
pation, characterize the Antonio Prats-Ventós paintings.
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