Óscar Domínguez

ÓSCAR DOMÍNGUEZ PALAZÓN (La Laguna, Tenerife, 1906 - Paris, 1957).
"Window over the sea", ca.1950.
Oil on panel.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Presents on the back labels of the Biosca Gallery and the Laietana Gallery.
Measurements: 54 x 65 cm; 69 x 80 cm (frame).

The work "Window on the sea" of the Canary painter Óscar Domínguez is a remarkable example of the synthesis between cubism and surrealism that characterized his maturity stage. Probably painted around 1950, it shows a deep experimentation with form, color and spatial perspective.

The image represents an interior scene framed by a window open to the sea, as the title indicates. A classic theme that, however, is treated in a fragmentary way, with elements arranged in superimposed planes that break with the traditional perspective. We can recognize forms of furniture, a curtain, a vase with brushes and a fish or stylized plant form. These objects are subjected to extreme geometrization.

Dominguez employs a rich and vibrant palette dominated by blues, reds, ochers and greens, giving the work a simultaneously warm and dreamlike atmosphere. The thick, dark outlines that frame each segment of the painting are reminiscent of both the cloisonné technique and certain aspects of African art, which so influenced the avant-garde.

Although Domínguez is clearly using a formal cubist language, his treatment of the objects introduces a symbolic and psychological charge typical of surrealism. The window functions as a symbol of openness to the unconscious or the imagined.

Domínguez belonged to the Generation of 1927, and invented decalcomania, a pictorial technique that consists of applying black gouache on a piece of paper, which is placed on top of another sheet on which a light pressure is exerted, to finally peel off both papers before they dry. In 1927, on family business, Domínguez traveled to Paris for the first time. He returned the following year and came into contact with the surrealist movement, and especially with its central figure, André Breton. This group would mark his career until he was expelled for approaching Picasso's painting. He made his individual debut in 1933, at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In 1935 he participated in the Surrealist Exhibition of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where he signed the manifesto "Du temps que les surréalistes aviaient raison". Also important are his surrealist objects, some of which he exhibited in Paris, at the Exposition Surréaliste d'Objets de la Galerie Charles Ratton in 1936. Because of the Civil War he went into exile in France, spending practically the rest of his days in the capital. The artist lived the last years of his life as a prisoner of madness after suffering from acromegaly, a degenerative disease that deformed his physique and made his skull grow extraordinarily. On New Year's Eve 1957 he committed suicide in Paris, completely drunk, opening his veins in the bathroom of a party given by his friend, the Viscountess of Noaffles. Domínguez is today considered one of the world's greatest exponents of the Spanish historical avant-garde that developed in Paris during the first decades of the 20th century. In general, the figures and objects that make up his surrealist works contain magical, mechanistic and sexual references, many of them located in the Canary Islands landscape, despite the fact that he lived most of his life in Paris. The most important contribution that Óscar Domínguez made to surrealism was the invention of decalcomania or decalcomania, a technique in which psychic automatism played an absolute leading role. This procedure had a magnificent acceptance among the surrealists who quickly adopted it and later influenced abstract expressionist painting. Decalcomania consists of introducing liquid black gouache between two sheets of paper by pressing them in an uncontrolled way. Another of his contributions to the surrealist movement was the theory of the petrification of time through which he began to introduce crystallized forms and structures of angular networks in his compositions. There are petrifactions of this style in the paintings of René Magritte.