In the first decades of the 20th century, artistic styles passed down mostly unchanged to the artists considered part of the second generation of artists, which include
Celeste Woss y Gil,
Jaime Colson,
Yoryi Morel,
Dario Suro,
Paul Giudicelli,
Clara Ledesma,
Ramón Oviedo,
Guillo Pérez and
Candido Bido, etc. These artists were the first to achieve true international success, exhibiting not only in Caribbean and Latin American countries, but also in the United States and Europe. More art schools opened up across the country, like
Juan Bautista Gomez's art school established in
Santiago de los Caballeros in 1920, teaching future artists like Joaquín Priego, Federico Izquierdo, and Yoryi Morel; Celeste Woss y Gil's art school studio in 1924 in Santo Domingo and a second one in 1931 after returning from New York; and
Enrique Garcia-Godoy, who established an arts school in
La Vega in 1930. These three schools would later go on to influence the development of Naturalism, Costumbrismo, and Pictorialist production in Dominican Republic, among other styles. Moreover, after dictator
Rafael Trujillo assumes complete control of the government, he establishes the National School of Fine Arts (ENBA) and the museum La Primera Exposición Nacional de Artes Plásticas (First National Exhibition of Plastic Arts) in Santo Domingo in 1942. The ENBA becomes a fundamental center for artistic training in the country. Beginning in 1939, European
refugees mostly from Spain, arrived to Santo Domingo. The impact that the
Republicans caused in the capital city was expressed in various ways, starting with the alteration of nightlife since the Spanish were used to everything at later hours; they founded cinemas, multiplied cafes, and established restaurants. In addition to nighttime recreation, these European refugees, including Central European Jewish exiles, also favorably influenced intellectual and university development, since many of them were academics, writers, and artists of various manifestations: like musicians, theater players, sculptors, painters and craftsmen. Some artists residing in Santo Domingo during this time include
Josep Gausachs, Manolo Pascual, Juan Bautista Acher,
Saul Steimberg, Kurt Schnitzer,
George Hausdorf,
José Vela Zanetti, Francisco Vásquez Díaz, Antonio Bernad Gonzálvez, Ernesto Lothar,
Josep Rovira, Francisco Dorado, Mounia André, Joaquín de Alba,
Hans Pape, Ana María Schwartz, Alejandro Solana Ferrer, and many others. The legacy these Spanish and Central European exiles have on Dominican art is evident in the approach to
Avant-garde styles like Surrealism and Abstraction seen in the works of the first generations of students in ENBA, who learned under the tutelage of Gausachs, Pascual, Vela Zanetti, Lothar and Hausdorf.
Impressionism and Expressionism Impressionism as an artistic language has been present since the earliest days of Dominican art, almost inseparable from naturalism, considering many naturalist artists painted with impressionistic tones and vice versa. Dario Suro is considered the leading Dominican impressionist, but other artists influenced by the style include Desangles, Juan Bautista Gómez, Celeste Woss y Gil,
Delia Weber, Enrique Garcia-Godoy, Yoryi Morel, Federico Izquierdo, and Aída Ibarra. Morel is most well known as the representative of Dominican pictorialist costumbrismo. The more naturalist painters are considered to be Tuto Báez, Juana García de Concepción, Genoveva Báez, Rafael Arzeno, and Servio Certad. Painters from the 1950–1990 generation with impressionist tendencies are: Mario Grullón, Marianela Jiménez, Xavier Amiama, Nidia Serra, Jacinto Domínguez, Pluntarco Andújar, Rafi Vásquez, among others. During the 1960s, the continuity of expressionism came from
Gilberto Hernandez Ortega,
Eligio Pichardo, Dario Suro, Jaime Colson, Silvano Lora, Paul Giudicelli, Ramon Oviedo, Clara Ledesma Guillo Perez, Jose Rincón Mora, Leopoldo Perez Lepe, Xavier Amiama, and Asdrubal Dominguez. During the 1960s Expressionism was the dominant art style but what distinguishes this second era of Dominican expressionism is a social agenda closely linked to the subversion and oppression that increased at the end of the Trujillo dictatorship, as well as the civic upheavals produced in the process that follows tyrannicide: armed uprising, poverty, and social exploitation; war and death become popular subjects for these social expressionists, evoked in an aesthetic clouded with a cold, dark, violent atmosphere and the deformation in the figurative representations and landscape.
Abstractionism During the 1940s Dominican abstractionism emerged as a visual language with Neohumanist and
Cubist Jaime Colson's neocubism, or colonial cubism, that expresses a Caribbean racial and tropical reality that contrasts Cubism's continental one. The cubist tendency that developed in Dominican art is that of the black Antillean world, "the intimate drama of the tormented life of man and through the music that elevates him", wrote Colson. The Colsonian neo-cubist style became a national trend during the 1950s and onwards, with more than one conscious imitator appearing in each decade, like Paul Giudicelli, Dario Suro, Clara Ledesma, Rafael Faxas, Domingo Liz, Eligio Pichardo, and Dionisio Pichardo. Colonial cubism can also be appreciated as a Dominican, Caribbean and even Antillean style, since its aesthetic is assumed in several countries like
Haiti,
Puerto Rico, and other islands as a result of Colson's influence. In the 1950s and 1960s, three eclectic
abstract expressionist painters rose to prominence:
Eligio Pichardo,
Guillo Pérez and
Paul Giudicelli. Of these three, Giudicelli is the one who formally defined himself as an abstract expressionist. Other important artists that produced abstract works are Gilberto Hernandez Ortega, Dario Suro, Jacinto Dominguez, Ada Balcear,
Tito Canepa, Silvano Lora,
Elsa Núñez, and Delia Weber, Fernando Peña Defilló, Norbeto Santana, Jose Perdomo, Clara Ledema, Dionisio Pichardo, and Luichy Martínez Richiez.
Surrealism In 1941, the founder of Surrealism,
Andre Breton, landed in Santo Domingo with his family,
Cuban painter
Wilfredo Lam,
Russian writer
Victor Serge, surrealist Pierre Mabille, and
German communist writer
Anna Seghers. Seeking refuge on the island away from the
Second World War that was enveloping Europe, they stayed for a short time and regularly in the company of Eugenio Fernández Granell, the Spanish painter and predominant surrealist on the island. Just two years later, Granell would become one of the foundational creators of
Poesia Sorprendida, the surrealist avant-garde literary magazine and movement in 1943. Dominican surrealism as a movement grew with the presence of these major surrealists during the 1950s and succeeding decades. The clearest and most perennially affiliated of these native surrealists is
Jorge Noceda. His characteristics involve a focus on fleeting and virtual aspects of waking life, associating many elements of nature (flowers, fruits, birds, ...) in dreamlike visions suggestive of fantasy and memory. Surrealism in the Dominican Republic had even more strong supporters who created unique works including Jaime Colson, Ivan Tovar,
Gilberto Hernández Ortega, Luis Oscar Romero, and Jose Felix Moya. Other artists who produced works with touches of surreality are Dario Suro, Clara Ledesma, Tito Canepa, Eligio Pichardo, Dionisio Pichardo, and Hilario Rodriguez.
New Figuration or Nueva Figuración Nueva Figuracion or
New Figuration was a revival of figurative art in Europe and America in the 1960s and 1970s following a period dominated by abstraction. The term Dominican New Figuration was coined by the critic and poet Jeannette Miller in 1972, of which she points out Fernando Peña Defilló, a principal abstract painter, as the artist who creates the conditions of what has been called Dominican New Figuration. Another artist associated with the movement is
Candido Bido. His style of Dominican neofigurativism centers paradise, floral, erotic, pictorial, lyrical, mythical, symbolic, dreamy, and terrestrial themes of the Dominican, Haitian, and Caribbean land. Danicel and Justo Susana are other important artists of this movement.
Island pop art Pop art is a figurative art whose aesthetic is based on everyday consumerism and images that come from advertising, photography, television, and other mass media. The simple reproducible image, cold and without any contained emotion of pop art challenged the conventions of fine arts, rising in popularity with young artists during the 1960s and 70s. Daniel Henriquez is the most prominent Dominican pop artists, drawn by kitsch representations of the popular dwelling, equally Dominican and Antillian.
1980s generation The generation of 1980 marked an extremely fruitful moment for artistic creation, vitally decisive for the reactivation of the imagination in Santo Domingo. Collective Generation 80, coined by Laura Gil, were members of group of young graduates of the National School of Fine Arts between the late 1970s and early 1970s who revolved almost in unison around the goal for creative freedom, yet separated by multiple goals and ideas. The eighties are the only generation of artists that formed a militant cohesion, defined not as members in a group, but as a collective spirit, where the magical and surreal seems to assert itself with much greater emphasis than the expressionist. «Figurative and abstract, magical, hyperrealistic and surrealist influence . Their heads or leaders are: Gabino Rosario, Hamlet Rubio, Germán Olivares, Persio Checo, José Ramón Medina, Genaro Phillips, Hilario Olivo, Jorge Pineda,
Belkis Ramírez, Tony Capellan, Gabino Rosario, Octavio Paniagua, Elvis Aviles, Luz Severino, Carlos Hinojosa, Dionisio Plubio de la Paz, Magdeleno Portorreal, to name a few.
Gallery ==Art Museums in Dominican Republic==