Nelson Domínguez, Delusions in a Painting…

Nelson Dominguez, attracted by ranges of ocher and the rather reduced palette, exudes the mystery of the African cultures in his topics and characters, which have marked paths around the Cuban idiosyncrasy from Lam to Diago

Nelson Dominguez, the owner of a prodigious imagination rooted in the rural universe where he comes from, is a suggestive model of the man enrooted in feelings, art philosophy and unconditional friendship.

It is not by chance that his humble origins have catapulted him through sources of popular wisdom on what we could call as peasant ballads, rich in story-telling, fraught with mysteries and full of a rich imagination, typical of individuals capable of turning the grace of a story into an incredible fiction like the stories of Juan Candela, the famous character by Onelio Jorge Cardoso.

Nelson Dominguez, a man of academic education, who studied at the National School of Art, and later, at the Higher Institute of Art, is one of the contemporary creators who added notes of creativity to the panorama of the Cuban art in the 1970s. Figures marked by surrealism and the new figuration, many of these inserted in unusual combinations where the landscape emerges as a distinctive and experimental gender, emerged from his paintbrushes.

Nelson Dominguez, attracted by ranges of ocher and the rather reduced palette, exudes the mystery of the African cultures in his topics and characters, which have marked paths around the Cuban idiosyncrasy from Lam to Diago. And he has opened routes for culturing a singular iconography that has consolidated his own style, supported by other contemporary painters like Zaida del Río and Flavio Garciandia.  His engravings, rich in reliefs and expressive in their thematic potential, are also from those years.

The prominent critic of art Tony Piñera has referred to his work as absorption, deep dreams of the matter, resistance: I agree with his interpretations, because the works by Dominguez, seen from the careful contemplation, open gaps into the deaf silence of meditation. His pieces translate an atmosphere away from the story, it evokes rather than represents. So, elongated figures on neutral backgrounds and diffused or multiform creatures that are integrated into the pictorial space with surprising natural matter, emerged.

The artist has also made incursions into sculpture. Attractive sculptural groups and new facilities have been emerging from his hands, which have taken the pulse of the daily life through common goods like clips and clotheslines, which have become signs of symbolic realities and sometimes tangible, for instance, those that have been built from balcony to balcony in Old Havana.

Works by this important artist, are valuable collections in the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana and some of them make up the rich thesaurus of private collectors around the world.

The legacy of Nelson Dominguez has been multiplied and his teaching vocation does not stop in time … we all are learning from him, including his eternal grateful students.

‘From his workshop the artist continues modeling figures … Today is an Eleggua, tomorrow, it could be an angel or a bold dragonfly … With the arrival of dawn things can change …