Page 416 - Arte e Historia

Danilo De los Santos
The Banco Poplar’s collection owns 17 works from
Balcácer. Besides «The Television» (1969), «Vase of Flow-
ers» (1973) and «Miami» (1985), referred to in previous
chapters, the remaining ones relate in large part to the
series Light Trials which, are testament to the discur-
sive scope of a great Dominican master in the balance
of the essentials of the tropics, her Antilles identity, «in
the Caribbean and beyond,» as states the American critic
Edward J. Sullivan, noting that: «While it is important to
consider Balcácer work as an integral reference in the genesis
of modernity in Dominican painting, especially for the current
context, one must examine how it relates to the wider range of
artistic interests related to the colour and shape that places her never dream of another place on earth than Santiago. For these
in a more developed space of Modern Arts.» (EJS, text from
the catalog «Wings and Roots,» November 2011, p.20).
«Light Trial 3. Tropical Window,» oil/canvas, 75x60
cm., 1989 v «Light Beam. Light Trial Series,» acrylic/canvas,
80x129 cm., 1990 v The Bayou,» oil/canvas, 136x202 cm., 1990
v «Tropical Heart. Light Trial Series,» mix/canvas, 72x59 cm.,
1990 v «Ginger. Light Trial Series,» oil/canvas, 128x90 cm.,
1990 v «Light Brush and Tropic,» mix/canvas, 75x60 cm., 1991
v «Flowers for the Trip to the Pilar, Zaragoza I,» oil/canvas,
76x60 cm., 1991 v «Flowers for the Trip to the Pilar, Zaragoza
II,» oil/canvas, 76x60 cm., 1991 v «Flowers for the Trip to
the Pilar, Zaragoza III,» oil/canvas, 76x60 cm., 1991 v «Light
Essay,» acrylic/canvas, 88x142 cm., 1992 v «Tropical Lights
II,» oil/canvas, 101x76 cm., no date v «Text of Light,» oil/can-
vas, 76x60 cm., no date v «Children Playing,» acrylic/canvas,
125x151.5 cm., 1995 v «Basketball,» acrylic/canvas, 20x32
inch., 1995 v «Anti-rust Shoes,» mix/canvas, 101x75 cm., 1996
v «The Wise Fisherman,» mix/canvas, 129x95 cm., 1996.
Guillo Pérez. (St. Víctor, Moca, 1926). With 39 solo
exhibitions from 1958 to 1989, a number that he mul-
tiplies showing in major international and native collec-
tive events, this distinctive master obtained many honors
in plastic at institutional levels, is awarded the Order of
Duarte, Sánchez and Mella, in the rank of Knight by the
President of the Republic in 1995.» «This honour crowns
fifty years consecrated to painting with the faith of someone
who gives himself to religion,» writes Marianne de Tolentino
(Listín Diario, July 22, 1995). His 28th personal exhi-
bition, «Santiago, time, place and color,» is held at the
Cultural Center (1989) and also exhibited at Gallery of
Modern Art, of the Dominican capital (1990). With a dia-
lectical, constructionist, and deconstructive conjugation,
he offers a visionary apology of the city from Cibao.
In the catalog, our teacher writes about his «pictorial
poem that I have always felt for my homeland, Moca, Santiago,
full of memories and anxieties to such an extent that I could
intimate and infinite reasons, and my strong faith in God, I
wanted to use my colour, my form and my expression to create
this poetic and pictorial tribute to Santiago, which I call San-
tiago, time, place and colour.»
The pictorial tribute, according to the critic Cándido
Bidó, is: «The narrative of reencounter. In an exhibition dedi-
cated to Santiago de los Caballeros, the master of colour, Guillo
Pérez, shows what is not yet polluted by the snobbery of the
time. What until then had been in his painting (colours and
shapes) –suddenly– the artistic proposal becomes a narrative of
the popular, where design and architectural graphic represents
the movements of history. I mean to the history of his city (…)
The iconography of this history tells of a popular and cultured
art (…) All components of this exceptional collection of paint-
ings coalescing within a cultural process and human activity,
recording with his quick brush and his fertile imagination, all
and every aspect of Santiago’s society, each psychological char-
acteristic, every spiritual fact, costumbrista and, in particular,
the mixture of blood and customs.»
It is not difficult to see the devices that this artist does man-
age, from a vantage of images and symbols, following his own logic
and analysis of synthesis, without showing contradiction when he
sketches the traditional and the modern. The reference of these de-
vices is to provide evidence of what master Guillo Pérez manages
to recreate using a chronological order and human needs. The
perspective focuses –precisely– in the architectural design, flowing
from the free invention to the non-academic naturalism.
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