Óscar Domínguez

Óscar Domínguez (1906–1957) was a notable painter born on the island of Tenerife, Spain. His work is characterised by a bold and experimental style and contrast-filled compositions in which the real and the imaginary merge to produce disturbing and enigmatic images. Domínguez’s ability to create these striking images earned him significant recognition within the Surrealist movement and a reputation as one of the most original and provocative artists of his time.   Born into a family that owned banana plantations on the island of Tenerife, in 1927 Domínguez moved to Paris to run the family business, living there until his death. The 21-year-old soon immersed himself in the vibrant artistic scene that flourished in the city in the 1930s. It was in this context that he established links with the Surrealists, including André Breton and Salvador Dalí, who would significantly influence his artistic development. He held his first solo exhibition in 1933 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Tenerife, sponsored by the Gaceta de Arte, a magazine that promoted contemporary creation. In 1934 Domínguez joined Breton’s group, bringing to Surrealism an imagery that drew on the inspiration of Tenerife’s imposing natural world. Domínguez contributed to the most important Surrealist publications and took part in the exhibitions and collective activities organised by the group.   A visionary painter and a superb creator of functionally symbolic objects, Óscar Domínguez was the inventor of ‘decalcomania.’ His creations can be seen to constitute one of the most complete manifestations of the imagination’s play impulse. In the words of Isidro Hernández Gutiérrez, the exhibition’s curator: ‘His painting seeks to give meaning to the exercise of creative freedom, understanding art and life as a single impulse in which chance, desire, dark humour and the irrational go hand in hand.’

The alchemist of island Surrealism

Óscar Domínguez’s childhood and adolescence, spent among the rugged landscapes of Tenerife, wove the intimate tapestry of his inner world. The black sand beaches, ancient dragon trees and seas of clouds that embrace the mountain peaks of the Canary Islands forged an imagery that remained persistently and symbolically present in his work, distinguishing it from other manifestations of Surrealism. These elements are not just landscapes; they are living matter that mutates into dreamlike images in Domínguez’s painting, in which lava forms - a direct legacy of Tenerife’s volcanic setting - merge with mutilated bodies and overflowing masses of colour, as if the subconscious was streaming out in eruptions of brushstrokes. The lunar aspect of the settings of some of these works is not fortuitous and is rather the visual echo of an island marked by the telluric, the solitary and the cosmic. The dragon tree characteristic of the Canary Islands is present in Domínguez’s paintings as a totem and a symbol, while the seas of clouds take on a metaphysical quality, inviting us to see them as suspended midway between the real and the fantastical.   Óscar Domínguez transformed this magical and primitive world into a language of his own, possibly inspired by pre-Hispanic mythology, legends and ancient civilizations passed down from generation to generation. This island mythology merges with the codes of European Surrealism but filtered through a volcanic sensibility and an Atlantic intuition. This is the origin of his transforming objects; items of symbolic function that seem to escape all practical logic, opening like windows onto the unexpected and the irrational. As a result, Domínguez’s work possesses enormous iconographic power. Every stroke, every assemblage of disparate forms, every broken body or zoomorphic figure contains an innate capacity to create visionary and startling images.

The magic of chance

One of Óscar Domínguez’s most unique contributions to Surrealist art was the creation and development of ‘decalcomania,’ a pictorial technique that consists of applying paint to one surface and then pressing it against another to generate unpredictable shapes without the necessity for a printing press. This method, which opened the door to the idea of randomness applied to objects, gave rise to abstract, organic and evocative textures charged with visual tension. In Dominguez’s hands decalcomania became much more than a technical resource and was rather a path to the unconscious, a poetic tool that allowed him to capture the irrational and transform it into an image of powerful symbolic force.   In the cosmic landscapes of his so-called ‘lithochronic surfaces’ Domínguez also achieved a unique way of capturing the passing of time through the pictorial matter itself. In his compositions created with this technique, the name of which refers to stone (lithos) and time (chronos), the artist seems to wish to represent the sedimentation of time through textures and experimental techniques, revealing the attraction which the ancestral held for him. In the words of the exhibition’s curator: ‘Óscar Domínguez’s painting offers us a dreamlike machine capable of shattering immediate reality through deviant and challenging metaphors, as his creations constitute one of the most complete expressions of the drive to play, free and unpredictable.’

Resistance and friendship in occupied Paris

After the Nazi occupation of France, Domínguez was not able to go into exile, unlike many of his contemporaries, and in 1941 he decided to return to his Paris studio, becoming an active figure within the clandestine networks of artistic and intellectual resistance to Nazism. Despite the oppressive climate, the studio remained a meeting place for committed creators, particularly the young poets of La Main à plume, which was extremely active in both publishing and the sale of works of art with the dual aim of keeping the flame of Surrealism alive and of financing the resistance.   It was in this context that Domínguez came closer to Pablo Picasso, whom he called ‘the most sensational man of the time’ and with whom he shared not only a common language but also a vision of art as a tool of resistance and transformation. Domínguez learned from Picasso’s formal and symbolic freedom while Picasso valued his empathy and volcanic, dreamlike energy. Amid the darkness of war, their friendship was always characterised by mutual respect and creative interconnection. The influence of Picasso on Domínguez’s work is quite clear, as he inspired him to explore the deconstruction of traditional forms and experiment with perspective. This influence is reflected in the fragmented and distorted figures to be seen in many of Domínguez’s paintings, in which a dialogue between the Cubist tradition and the Surrealist aesthetic is evident.

The final years: between shadow and fire

In the 1950s Óscar Domínguez’s life was marked by profound personal and physical instability, the result of a degenerative illness which in addition to affecting him physically and mentally also led him to experience increasing melancholy. His creative activity was not, however, interrupted and in fact acquired a more corporeal, introspective and symbolist dimension.

Domínguez’s style became more sombre, with a less explosive palette but one charged with emotional density and in which the metamorphic forms and echoes of his inner landscapes remained present. He continued to explore objects in transformation, surfaces filled with meanings and mythical motifs, albeit with a more austere and almost elegiac tone. His work continued its dialogue with Surrealism but now with a completely individual voice, stripped of any artifice. Óscar Domínguez died in Paris on 31 December 1957.