As an artist and a teacher, Lorenzo Domínguez has always advocated for the absolute freedom of the work of art. To begin with, he thought that a work of art should be completely detached from its sources, since for him representation was not the essence of art. In his own words: "The more somebody standing in front of the Venus de Milo perceives the woman in the sculpture, the less he will see the sculpture; and conversely, the less he perceives the woman, the more he will see the sculpture. It is true that works of art are born with an umbilical cord that links them to their origin. Because of this, in art there are people who mistake the new being for the original one. It is necessary to learn when to cut this link, and this is true both for the creator and for the observer" (1).
But the work of art should be free not only from its sources; it should also be free in relation to its purposes. The autotelia of the work of art was a fundamental idea for Lorenzo Domínguez. In the first place, because he believed that any artistic creation must transcend the merely functional in order to project aesthetic values. Furthermore, he was also convinced that art can not serve any external purposes. As Lorenzo Domínguez said, "All powers in the world have attempted to bind and imprison art: politics, religion, economy, science, philosophy, journalism . . . They have tried to imprison and to steer it. From kings and leaders down to the last feature writer, people have always thought they understood the laws by which art could and should be controlled. Only a few have understood that art is not a social service but a social fact . . . and that its laws will never be managed by criticism, journalism or government, but by art alone. Throughout history, art has been enslaved many times, but it always flees rejuvenated from its prisons" (2).
Sculptures, embossed metal plates, drawings
As it has been pointed out in the introductory note, Lorenzo Domínguez was a versatile artist. Above and beyond anything else, he was a sculptor who produced around two hundred and fifty pieces in stone, bronze, wood, ceramics and plaster. Notwithstanding, he also cultivated and cherished the practice of metal embossing, a technique where sculpture and drawing blend. He completed thirty-four large copper and iron plates. Finally, as a draughtsman, he produced a significant body of work, which approximates some five hundred drawings.
A. Sculptures:
Lorenzo Domínguez used a wide variety of materials for his sculptures. Of the two hundred and fifty pieces we have registered in this catalog, there are seventy-six pieces in marble and stone, some of them of monumental size; thirty-four in bronze; five woods; nine ceramics; thirteen cements; and one hundred and fifteen plasters.
In this catalog, his sculptures have been classified by material and by their known or presumed date of execution.
Lorenzo Domínguez defined a monument as "the transposition or exaltation into architecture of a personality, an event or an idea", and as such, he said, it must have "communal and everlasting character".
This catalog includes a section grouping sixteen monuments. All these sculptures can also be found elsewhere in the catalog. They are made of relatively long-lasting materials like stone, bronze or cement, and are on display at public sites, generally an open area, a park, a square or the garden of a public building.
The first monument that Domínguez completed was dedicated to Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the great Spanish histologist. The monument is currently situated at the old School of Medicine, in Madrid. Cajal stands with a book in his left hand. The figure's body is rendered with a sort of geometric stylization, while the venerable head is more realistic in its form.
In Santiago, Chile, there are several monuments by Lorenzo Domínguez: "To Jaime Pinto Riesco", "To Johann Sebastian Bach", "To Dr. Germán Valenzuela Basterrica", "To Dr. Luis Calvo Mackenna", and "To Pasteur". They are all of remarkable quality, but the "monumental" aspects are more noticeable in two sculptures characterized by their generous volumes: the head of Bach, in hazelnut stone; and the group of mother and son, done in basalt and dedicated to the distinguished pediatrician Luis Calvo Mackenna.
In Argentina, Lorenzo Domínguez completed ten monuments. Shortly after his arrival in Mendoza, he carved a head of Pasteur currently located at the Lagomaggiore Hospital, in Mendoza; and two heads of Leandro N. Alem, a conspicuous Argentinean politician, that have been placed at a park and a school.
"To San Martín and O'Higgins" is the first large-size sculptural group that he completed in Argentina. The monument is a tribute to the friendship between Argentina and Chile, and it portrays their two main historical figures while grasping a common sword. Located at the Plaza Chile in Mendoza, the monument is made up of two figures of three and a half meters standing over a massive stone base.
At the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, there is a large bronze figure of Christ, "Christ of the Resurrection", which was recently cast, but whose original plaster dates back to 1947.
Other monuments include "To Dr. Anacleto Gil", displayed at the Parque de Mayo in the provincial capital of San Juan; "Professor Schreiter", at the Miguel Lillo Institute in Tucumán; and "Plato", a half figure in stone originally at a patio of the Department of Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, which is now located inside its new building.
Another remarkable monument is the sculptural group placed at the grave site of the naturalist Miguel Lillo. It is located at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, in the park of the institute of botany and zoology named after the scientist. The monument presents two standing feminine nudes almost three meters in height. One of the figures, "Flora", carries flower garlands on her head and hands; the other one, "Fauna", holds a puma cub in her arms.
Lorenzo Domínguez considered that there is a clear difference between artistic materials and artistic matter (3). Artistic materials exist beyond their respective arts: they are the stones in the quarry, or the colors in the tubes. Matter, on the other hand, is part of the artistic essence of a work. It is the stone organized as a sculpture or the colors organized as a painting. This means that stone and bronze play the same role in sculpture that oils or watercolors play in painting. The sculptor must know and rule over the materials of his art. When the work of art is achieved, material becomes matter.
Of all the materials a sculptor may use, Lorenzo Domínguez assigned a fundamental relevance to stone. As Diego Pró (4) writes, for Domínguez, sculpting was a struggle between the artist and the material resisting him. Domínguez thought that there is no quality in an art that occurs without a struggle. When the material is soft, the sculptor conquers it with ease. He can do whatever pleases him, but the results suffer and are less solid. This happens with materials like clay and plaster, which are "too soft and obedient". Stone is different; it resists, but at the same time helps and leads the hand of the sculptor. Because of this, Domínguez believed that the stone has a voice and a life during the process of becoming a sculpture.
Stone was his material of preference. The sculptures he admired without reservation are made of stone or marble: the Egyptian works, the Assyrian animals, the Greek sculptures of Phidias and Praxiteles, the works of Michelangelo, and the magnificent gigantic statues of Easter Island.
For Lorenzo Domínguez stone is the authentic form of expression for American art: "In Chile, I realized that sculpture in the Americas should be mainly done in stone, as in pre-Columbian times" (5).
Even when speaking about stone alone, there are endless possible variations. Domínguez studied the potentialities offered by Argentinean and Chilean stones. He worked with them, analyzing each new material, and even destroying a large number of pieces he did not like: "The material does not easily surrender itself to the sculptor. It is necessary to conquer it every day until you understand it. Only then does the material reveal its secrets, its intimate voices, its mysteries. This is not a knowledge that comes from chemistry or geology. This is not enough. It is necessary to know the matter through love, before you can master it, taking advantage of all its aesthetic possibilities. These things are easy to say but extremely difficult to accomplish. Each stone has its own composition, its own hardness, its color, its veins, its spots, and all this requires the use of different tools. Even shine and polish depend on the intrinsic characteristics of stones. Many of them do not reach their highest possibilities due to a lack or to an excess of polishing. . . . In Santiago I worked the blue stone, a not too hard beautiful basaltic stone that has now become very popular. I also worked the yellow stone, the black basalt from Chile, the red porphyry. Later on, in Mendoza, I found, among others, the hazelnut, the golden and pink stones, the serpentine and the green stone" (6).
Two marble sculptures, completed during his stay in Spain between 1926 and 1931, stand out as definitive works: "Cajal", influenced by Spanish religious sculpture of the 16th and 17th centuries, and "Julia".
There are several remarkable sculptures among Lorenzo Domínguez's Chilean works (1931-1941): two pieces of classical execution, "Saint Olalla", in marble, and a torso in stone; and the vigorous heads of Augusto D'Halmar and Víctor Delhez. During this period, the sculptor's most clearly defined aesthetic tendency, "monumentalism", reached an early maturity. Monumentalism, or sculpture conceived as the architectural organization of large volumes, can be appreciated in stones like "To Johann Sebastian Bach", "Lilión", "Portrait of the Moon", "To Dr. Luis Calvo Mackenna".
In Mendoza, between 1941 and 1949, Domínguez worked on a series of stone heads and half figures. They are the portraits of his wife, Clara, of the painter Francisco Bernareggi, Beatriz Capra, Pasteur, Alem, Paco Correas, of the poet Jorge Enrique Ramponi, Hipólito Digiovanni, Zezette Daneo, the painter Ramón Gómez Cornet, of Dorita and Francisco Amengual, the engraver Sergio Sergi, Ana Villar, María Ticac. During this period, Domínguez also sculpted other works that combine symbolic and figurative elements: "The Planet Venus", "The Morning Star", a study for a monument to Miguel Servet, the monument to San Martín and O'Higgins.
In Tucumán, between 1949 and 1956, Domínguez worked on new symbolic stones, more abstract than his earlier sculptures: the "Time Hieroglyph", an almost allegorical relief carved on a red stone and displaying elements symbolizing time like the turtle and the marching feet; a stone skull covering his empty eye sockets with both hands as an homage to the unknown political prisoner; a geometric representation of death in black basalt. There are more portraits of the painter Lino Spilimbergo, of Leonor Rigau, of the Cuban boxer "Young Herrera", of Guido Parpagnoli, a third portrait of his wife... His sculptures are monumentalistic in character, and some of them are also of large proportions: "Professor Schreiter", "Flora", "Fauna".
Between 1956 and 1963, in Mendoza, he did three sculptures in stone: a half figure of Plato, a torso in black granite, and "Peace", a symbolic work.
Bronzes appeared early in Lorenzo Domínguez's artistic life. Among the bronzes corresponding to the Chilean period we should mention: the monument to Jaime Pinto Riesco; a half figure of archbishop Crescente Errázuriz where only the head is in bronze and the rest of the figure in wood; a portrait of Elisa Bindhoff before she married André Breton; "Saint Olalla"; "Eliana"; other portraits like "Elena Bezanilla" and "Elena Correa", a head of the painter Pablo Burchard, another one of professor Alejandro Lipschutz, one of the painter Hernán Gazmuri, and a portrait of the Chilean sculptress Lily Garafulic, "Lilión".
In Mendoza, Argentina, Domínguez did three bronzes. Among them there is a remarkable head of Beatriz Capra, currently at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires. In 1950, in Tucumán, Domínguez finished the bronze portrait of his great friend, the painter Lino Spilimbergo.
Four bronzes described in this catalog are recent casts from plasters of different periods: "Clara", from a 1942 plaster; "Hipólito Digiovanni", from a 1944 plaster; the monumental "Christ of Resurrection" placed at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, cast from a 1947 plaster; and a study of "Flora", from a 1951 plaster. Currently, the works in plaster left by the sculptor are being cast in bronze. Hence, this section of the catalog is likely to grow accordingly.
This section includes only five works. Three among them deserve special mention: a Christ from 1946 in colored, gold-plated wood; and two heads Lorenzo Domínguez finished shortly before his death that were inspired by Easter Island subjects: "Young Girl from Easter Island", from 1961, and the portrait of Father Sebastián Englert, from 1962.
This catalog registers nine works in ceramics. "Barcelona", a symbol of war, portrays a mother holding her child, looking upwards at a sky full of airplanes and bombs. "The Little Mother", from 1953, is a playful maternity that contrasts with the tragic "Barcelona". It depicts a little girl hugging her doll. Also noteworthy are "Little Nude" and several female heads and masks: "Lita", "Clara Federica", and "Cecil Cook" done in terracotta.
Thirteen of Lorenzo Domínguez's works are in cement. Most of them are closely related to other works in different materials: "Saint Olalla", "Portrait of the Moon", "Our Lord Don Quixote", "The Poet Ramponi", "Mendoza", "María Ticac", "San Martín, Study for the Head", "The Virgin of Hope", "The Prim Young Lady".
There are two works that do not have counterparts in other materials. One is the Yankovic-Garafulic family mausoleum, completed in Chile in 1936. This work is organized as two large cement friezes flanking a double door. On each frieze there are three human figures. On the door, hands in bronze join as in prayer. The second work, the "Fountain of Science" (1954), is a monument located at the Miguel Lillo Institute in Tucumán. It consists of a large owl, the symbol of wisdom, standing by a fountain, against a decorated wall.
A total of one hundred and fifteen plasters have been identified so far. Many of these works have also been done in other materials. Here, in order to avoid repetitions, we will preferably refer to those plasters that yet do not have a counterpart in bronze or other hard materials.
"Jacqueline" (1937) is a female half figure of classical lines; "Barcelona" (1941) is a tragic mother that symbolizes the horror of war; "Fanny Gutiérrez" (1941) is a portrait of one of the artist's sisters; and "Gilberto Suárez Lago" (1942) is a portrait of a politician from Mendoza. "The Married Woman" (1943) is a large-size work left behind by the artist at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán in 1956 when he returned to Mendoza. The original plaster has not yet been located. What seems to be a rather imperfect copy, also in plaster, perhaps done by a student, is currently placed at the University's Cultural Center. "Irma", (1944) is a portrait of Irma Aragonés; "Ana Villar de Domínguez" (1945) is a portrait head of the artist's mother. "Young Infanta from Mendoza" (1947) is a project for a monument to San Martín's daughter suggesting a maternity. "The Argentinean Antarctic" (1950) is a symbolic work portraying a powerful female figure with a sea lion by her side. Among other portraits done in 1948 we should mention: "Argentina Gómez Cornet" (1948), the painter Ramón Gómez Cornet's wife; "Estelita Civit", wife of Manolo Civit, an architect from Mendoza; and a portrait of Dr. Fernando Mas Robles, the Spanish physician who was the artist's lifetime friend. In 1951 the artist does the portrait of Dr. Horacio Descole, then rector of the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; and in 1952 the interesting portrait of the engraver Pompeyo Audivert.
B. Embossed Metal Plates:
This aesthetic manifestation is peculiar to Lorenzo Domínguez. The artist worked on metal plates, starting from a drawing but always seeking a third dimension. The technique is based on the pounding of large plates of copper or iron with either a hammer or a combination of hammer and chisel. While being pounded, the metal plate rests over a tar cake which, if at the right temperature, can resist the hammer blows and at the same time yield, allowing the emergence of volumes towards the front of the plate.
This catalog presents thirty-four iron and copper plates of about 70 by 50 cm, classified according to their dates of execution.
Lorenzo Domínguez developed this technique in Tucumán, between 1949 and 1956. Plates from this period have themes that are prevalent in the artist's work: characters from the Old and New Testament, American figures of pre-Columbian style, and above all the subject of Don Quixote. Some works of this period are: "The Prophet Jonas", "Saint John the Baptist", "Fight between Pachamama and War", "Our Lord Don Quixote", "Adam and Eve", "Judith and Holofernes", "Portrait of the Sun" and "Visitation". There are also eight iron plates that belong to the series of "falls" of Don Quixote: "Strangling of the Hand", "Crucifixion in Madness", "Crucifixion in Health", "Encounter with Insanity", "The Invisible Wall", "Censorship", "The Creative Hand", "The Spoliation".
Between 1956 and 1959, back in Mendoza, Domínguez completed "Saint Barbara", "The Mountains", "The Pregnant Woman", "The Visit".
In 1961 he finished "Breakfast is Ready", a large copper plate on the subject of painful servitude. Mother and child appear with the nails and crown of thorns typical of Christian crucifixion.
Between 1961 and 1963, Domínguez worked on many iron and copper plates based on Easter Island themes: "Hieroglyph from Hanga-Papara", "Komaris", "Boat chased by an Aku-Aku", "Make-Make of the Storm", the extraordinary "Flying Bird", "Birds, or The Kiss", "The Shipwrecked", and an Easter Island torso.
C. Drawings:
Lorenzo Domínguez, as so many other sculptors, had the passion and the discipline of drawing. This catalog registers some five hundred drawings, all of great artistic value. They are conceived from the perspective of a sculptor who prefers to work with large volumes.
For clarity's sake, we have organized his drawings by subject, identifying a total of twenty-three series. Within each series, the drawings are classified by dates of execution.
Four of the series fall under the generic title of "Nudes":
These nudes of Lorenzo Domínguez are works of maturity. The artist began these drawings in 1954, in Tucumán, and continued almost until his death, completing a total of two hundred nude drawings.
In art, the nude reflects a search for what is essential, a rejection of any ornaments or masks. Domínguez drew only female nudes, and they vary from the realistic to the stylized.
These drawings are an aesthetic transposition of twenty-four "falls" suffered by Cervantes' character. Actually, the series includes thirty-two drawings, since in addition to the twenty-four definitive renditions, there are different versions and studies of some of the drawings. When Lorenzo Domínguez finished this series, plans were made to use these drawings to illustrate a special edition of Cervantes' novel.
Lorenzo Domínguez was always attracted by Cervantes' character, as reading matter and meditation subject first, as an aesthetic paradigm afterwards.
In the figure of the knight-errant, the artist finds everlasting symbols. His falls are varied in nature. Some are caused by cruelty or vulgarity: in "Encounter with Servility" Don Quixote finds some merchants and is beaten by a mule keeper; in "Encounter with Brutality" he is beaten by a goat shepherd; "Sadism" refers to the passage in the novel when the dukes, as a joke, free a bag full of angry cats, and the animals attack and hurt Don Quixote; in "Strangling of the Hand" Maritornes mocks him and lets him hang from a window during a whole night; in "The Abuse of Genius", Don Quixote is run over by a herd of swine.
There are falls due to ingratitude, like "The Spoliation", where Don Quixote, after freeing the galley prisoners, is robbed by them; or "Sancho's Betrayal", where he is beaten by Sancho Panza; or "Encounter with Friendship", where Don Quixote is knocked down by his friend Bachelor Sansón Carrasco in disguise as the Knight of the White Moon.
In "Encounter With Lust", a muleteer in love with Maritornes hits Don Quixote, causing him to fall.
Sometimes it is fantasy itself that falls through, pulling Don Quixote along. There is a "First Shipwreck of Fantasy", a depiction of his catastrophic trip in the enchanted ship; and a "Second Shipwreck of Fantasy", about another catastrophic trip on a flying horse.
There are falls caused by madness: by poetic madness in "Crucifixion in Madness", where Don Quixote appears on the cross of the allegorical windmill; and by the pathological madness of Cardenio in "Encounter with Insanity".
For today's observer this Via Crucis offers some very interesting and polemic falls, like "Censorship", where Don Quixote is forced by some of his most prominent neighbors -the priest and the barber- to return to his village, muzzled and in a cage; or "Encounter with Power", where Don Quixote falls from his horse, overwhelmed at the sight of the powerful aristocratic figures of the Duke and his wife.
Falls of definite political nature are "The Civil War", and "Horror of the Future". In the first drawing, Spain fights against Spain, and the symbolic Don Quixote is attacked and run over by a herd of bulls, another symbol of Spain. In the second drawing, there is a deliberate anachronism: Don Quixote falls at the doors of Barcelona, as if hit by a premonition of the Spanish Civil War. In the drawing, a sculpture of Lorenzo Domínguez, "Barcelona", appears as an homage to the victims of bombings.
In the last fall, "Crucifixion in Health", the religious dimension of Don Quixote, already suggested in "Crucifixion in Madness", becomes clearer. In this final fall the Spanish knight stops being Don Quixote. In the drawing, Cervantes' character appears at the center, and to his right and left appear the housekeeper and the niece, mimicking the female figures of the Christian crucifixion. Upon breaking the spear, the knight's arms become the arms of a cross. Don Quixote dies on that cross, and only Alonso Quijano is left behind.
It includes twenty five drawings, many among them having a family member as the subject: "Clara Federica" and "Clara" are portraits of his wife; "Fernán", "Lorenzo" and "Federica" are portraits of his children; "Ana Villar" is a portrait of his mother.
In most of the remaining portraits, the subject is not specified or there is a mere reference to the model's first name: "Child", "María Rosa", "Gloria", "Girl from Tucumán", "Checkered Woman", "Portrait", "Girl from Mendoza". An exception is the portrait of his friend, the painter Lino Spilimbergo (1950).
Although not a formally religious person, Lorenzo Domínguez had a sense of the sacred and held a profound knowledge of the biblical texts. These personal traits are reflected in this series of thirty-one drawings.
"The Prophet Jonas" and the subseries on "Judith" found their inspiration in the Old Testament; while "The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse", "Veronica", "The Virgin", and a number of drawings on the theme of the visitation of the Virgin Mary to Saint Elizabeth were inspired by the New Testament. There are also figures from later Christian history: "Saint Joan"; "Saint Barbara"; and two drawings named "Virgin of Luján", conceived as the starting point for an embossed iron or a tombstone to be placed at the grave site of the artist's mother.
Above all, the figure of Christ presides over the religious drawings: "Christ" (1953); "The Destruction of Man" (1955); "Judas' Kiss", one of the most beautiful drawings done by the artist (1956); and "Christ and St. John" and "The Unrepentant Thief", both dated in 1957. In 1961 Lorenzo Domínguez completed three remarkable drawings: a full figure and two faces of Christ. One of these was completed on Easter Island.
This series includes only four drawings of interesting compositions. Among them, "Little Mother" is related to several sculptures in plaster and ceramics on the subject of the girl and the doll.
This series of five drawings includes an anthropomorphic bird and several stylized seeds. These drawings were done between 1957 and 1959, before the artist travelled to Easter Island; but they show thematic and formal coincidences with the petroglyphs that he would later find in the Isle, as we read in the artist's citation that appears in our description of the Komaris Series.
This series includes fifteen drawings that the artist called "Stones". Their motives resemble rocks or piles of rocks.
"Reclining Woman" (1955) is a female figure surging from a stack of stones.
Other drawings represent stone blocks that evoke certain figures. Drawing No. 2, "Stone" (1957), represents both a rock and the head of an animal with prominent fangs. The artist included this mythological monster among the figures he used to call the "beast-men".
Another stone figure is "Johann Sebastian Bach" (1957).
There are three drawings called "The Milky Way", obviously related to the stone sculpture of the same name.
Four drawings, also from 1957, evoke figures of the devil and Christ as blocks of stone.
Each of the last four drawings in the series of the "Stones" (No's 12 to 15), is simply called "Stone". Curiously, drawing No. 12, done in 1957, was repeated years later when the artist was in Easter Island (Series of the Easter Island Stones No. 1).
In this series there are fifteen drawings on both contemporary and aboriginal Chilean themes.
Two drawings from 1954 depict the port of Valparaíso from a current perspective.
On the other hand, three drawings about the Araucanian woman, ("Araucanian Venus"), and two drawings about the "cacique" Caupolicán, are inspired by pre-Columbian Chile and the wound left by the Spanish Conquest (1956).
Finally, eight drawings from 1957 depict the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. In these interesting drawings the female figures are represented with different levels of abstraction and detail, and thus help to understand the aesthetic process in Domínguez's work.
This series includes twenty-eight works on miscellaneous subjects. There are some interesting subseries: "Metropolitan Venus" (1947), of erotic connotations; two drawings on condors (1956); three drawings on the killing of rabbits by peasants (1957); and a subseries on childbirth also from 1957.
Two drawings called "Barcelona", on the subject of the Spanish Civil War, deserve a special mention. They are a denunciation of Nazi air raids.
The pre-Columbian world is evoked in "Fight between Pachamama and War", probably from 1944. "Aristotle" and "Pegasus", both from 1949; and "Plato", from 1959, evoke classical Greece.
"Breakfast is Ready", a drawing from this series, has already been presented when describing the embossed copper plate based on this drawing.
In "Valle Inclán" (1962), the artist evokes the relevant figure of the great Spanish writer that he met in his youth.
Two remarkable drawings in this series, both from 1961, are variations on a single theme: "I Know Who I Am". The drawings illustrate a scene from chapter V of Cervantes' novel, and combine, in an aesthetic synthesis, two figures that frequently appear in Lorenzo Domínguez's work: Christ and Don Quixote. Don Quixote takes the semblance of Christ, with a crown of thorns or a halo, raising his hand as in the act of blessing.
Finally, there is a drawing we have already referred to in the section about the artist's life, "The Madly in Love Melon Vendor", that carries a humorous and loving message addressed to his wife, Clara.
Drawings of Easter Island:
Eleven series can be grouped under this common title. These series include about one hundred and thirty drawings that were completed by Domínguez while in Easter Island or shortly after his return to Argentina. It must be pointed out here that even though the Island's sculptures and petroglyphs are a starting point and a source of aesthetic inspiration for Domínguez, his drawings never fall into the category of documentary illustrations. In this, the artist is true to his most fundamental beliefs about art. As he has said: "I have avoided the document. I don't know whether I have really seen many of these things or if I am making them up, because I draw a little from what I see, some more from behind of what is seen, some from inside of what is seen, and as much as possible from what is not seen" (7).
Lorenzo Domínguez completed twenty-nine drawings of the "moais" or gigantic stone sculptures. He writes about these statues: "All these sculptures are very beautiful, free of any gargantuan monstrosity, remarkable and imposing because of their monumental conception and not just because of their size. They are not disfigured, acromegalyc monsters as sometimes has been suggested, but beautiful and harmonious. They have been dignified and exalted by a geometrical rendering which is intelligent, powerful, full of energy, and infuses them with strength and vigor while keeping the external forms rich in nuances and soft shades; they are solid in their structure and full of meaning, displaying a poetic and tragic expression which impregnates them with mystery" (8). And he adds: "In the statues I have studied, there is a rigorous abstraction of volumes and of forms. The artists who made them had an extraordinary knowledge of their models. I have studied, for instance, some intact ears and, beyond the distortions and abstractions, they do not lack any anatomical elements. . . . The same could be said of the mouth, the nose, the forehead, the jaw, the neck, the chest with its pectoral masses, where stylization makes an inspired and unique use of all the possibilities given by the planes and volumes of bones and muscles" (9). These sculptures start from a direct knowledge of the model and rise to higher levels of aesthetic abstraction.
In his drawings, Lorenzo Domínguez sometimes identifies a statue with a generic name: "Moai"; or "Moai from Ahu Akivi", that is, a moai that is part of the "ahu" or monument by that name; or "Moai from Rano-Raraku", that is, a moai from the slopes of the main volcano on the Island. In some of the drawings, the moais have been identified by their old names, like "Piro-Piro". Others keep the more or less authentic names given by the natives or tradition, like "Hina-Riru", the name of the first sculptor who arrived on the Island. Besides, Lorenzo Domínguez has baptized many of the moais in his drawings: "The Angel"; the "Moai of the Tremendous Wound", for a sculpture marked by a deep fissure; the "Christ", which, as the artist says in his journal, "reminded me of a wonderful polychrome head of a Romanesque Christ at the Louvre"; "The Old Man"; "Moai of the Carved Ear"; "Watchman"; "Smiling Moai"; or "Flowered Moai", that refers to the "pua-mae'a", or "stone flower", an omnipresent Easter Island lichen that simultaneously beautifies and destroys the stone.
In varying degrees, the subjects of Lorenzo Domínguez's drawings always exhibit stylization. Some, like the "Moai from Ahu Akivi", are close in appearance to the original sculpture; others, like the Moais No's 1 and 4, are more geometrically and abstractly rendered.
Beyond the strong aesthetic impact that this series has on the viewer, there is an emotional and metaphysical impact that is impossible to avoid. In this series, we believe, Lorenzo Domínguez proposes an aesthetic synthesis of two antagonistic ideas about human transitoriness: some of the drawings evoke death through the devastating signs of corrosion, while others, with their clear beauty, symbolize the perfection of eternity.
In this series there are thirty-two drawings of make-makes, which are petroglyphs representing a god with big eyes. Lorenzo Domínguez's make-makes are contemporary renderings of the old stylizations by the Island's artists. An observer, alien to the Island's culture, might believe them to be theatrical masks.
Especially worth noting for their level of abstraction and suggestive power are Make-Make No. 1, or "Make-Make of the Storm", and make-makes No's 3, 5, 9 to 12, 14 to 16, 19, and 22 to 26.
Domínguez assigned a great aesthetic relevance to the make-make, as we see when he describes the cave of Ana-O-Heu, the walls of which are covered by these petroglyphs, as "the lost paradise where art regained all its freedom". (10)
This series includes seventeen drawings. In Easter Island, the bird-men were "mythological beings, half man, half bird, symbolizing the victor hero who, once a year, after obtaining for his tribe the first egg laid by a sea bird on some islands that could be seen from the coast, crowned the chief of his tribe as king of the Island. . . . The young competitors dashed down the high cliffs towering two hundred meters over the sea, swam towards the cays that were covered with sharp rocks, searched for eggs from the sea birds, and finally returned to Orongo. Many perished in the attempt . . . but he who returned with the first unbroken egg made his tribe's chief the king of the Island; and his story was immortalized by the sculptors on those very rocks . . ." (11).
In some of these drawings, Lorenzo Domínguez presents the bird men carrying the legendary egg; in others, he includes symbols from other petroglyphs, like komaris, make-makes, or fish. Frequently, the drawings show groups of bird men.
There are ten drawings in this series. Hands are almost an anomaly in Easter Island's moais: delicate and nearly two-dimensional, they stand out in remarkable contrast with the monumental structure of the statues. On this subject, Lorenzo Domínguez says: "The arms are presented as powerful and geometrical volumes, but the hands, in general, have such a minimal relief that they seem to be merely carved over the abdomen's mass; they are so fine and stylized that they look feminine, as in ecstasy, towards the realistic and anatomical sex" (12).
These are seven drawings on the subject of the komari or vulva. Domínguez says about them: "I didn't know about the komaris before coming to the Island, or at least, I had never noticed them. However, they are very similar to my series on the seeds, and they represent the female sex" (13).
This series includes six female torsos, some of stylized design, others of monumental conception. Five of these torsos were completed on the Island and the sixth in Mendoza in February of 1962. One of them was repeated as an embossed copper plate in 1962.
The five drawings in this series have the central motif of two birds facing each other with their beaks touching, thus suggesting the second title for the drawings: "The Kiss". The same subject was used for an embossed copper plate.
This series includes five drawings on that particular stone relief that Lorenzo Domínguez considered the supreme masterpiece among the Island's petroglyphs: "I was almost ready to leave, when I found in Anakena a most extraordinary petroglyph. On a big 'paenga' (ashlar stone for an ahu or block for a wall) measuring 1.20 m. in height by 50 cm. wide, a beautiful bird or 'bird-man' is engraved. It is astounding how properly placed it is on the flat surface of the stone. The stylization is a stroke of genius. The stone stands facing the sea, that sea of copper, on the beautiful beach of Anakena. I don't know who erected that stone or when, but it must have been somebody with an extraordinary sensibility. The bird from Anakena is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It is fortunate that it is still there because it would be the pride of any museum" (14).
At another time, Domínguez says of his own drawing of this flying bird: "I have finished the best drawing of my entire life: a stylization in charcoal of the bird, on white paper. . . . I call it 'The Bird', a bird flying towards infinity and coming from infinity..." (15).
Back in Argentina, Lorenzo Domínguez returned to this subject of the flying bird, completing an embossed iron plate that we have mentioned as one of his great achievements.
This is also a small series, including only five drawings that take inspiration from a petroglyph in Tongariki and from the petroglyphs 'papa rona', or petroglyphs engraved on the ground, which the artist found in the bay of La Pérouse at Te-Peka-Peka. The drawings depict some sea creatures: a tuna and a toya fish, another fish with an embedded starfish, and some very strange octopuses that may represent the devil.
Five drawings of stones of remarkable shapes, including some that suggest a skull or the idea of death.
The series consists of twelve drawings of miscellaneous subjects.
A drawing that the artist judges as one of the "prettiest" he has ever done, is "Ship Chased by an Aku-Aku". It shows a ship followed by "a fantastic bird, very probably the devil" (16). This drawing was repeated in an extraordinary embossed iron plate.
Two drawings show a face covered by a hand. For one of them, the artist used soil from the Island at the place of ink or charcoal.
There are three drawings of apes or ape-men. One of them is called "Group of Ape Men"; the other two are called "El Potente".
Three drawings that take inspiration on petroglyphs from Hanga-Papara and Te-Peka-Peka deal with the subject of flowers or fecundation.
Finally, three drawings called "The Shipwrecked" show some wonderful anthropomorphic oars. In each drawing, death appears in the form of wooden skulls carved in the oars. At a later time, Lorenzo Domínguez would render this motif in an embossed iron plate.
Exhibitions of Lorenzo Domínguez's works
1939. Riverside Museum, New York, United States of America, June-September. Latin American Exhibition of Fine and Applied Art. Three sculptures (Lilión, Saint Olalla, Cajal).
1941. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Academia de Bellas Artes, Mendoza, Argentina, October 3. Thirty sculptures.
1942. Toledo Museum of Art, United States of America. Exhibition of large-size photographs on Contemporary Chilean Art. The artist participates with photographic enlargements of three of his sculptures (Monument to Dr. Luis Calvo Mackenna, a female nude and Professor Lipschutz).
1942. Galería de la "Sociedad Amigos del Arte", Buenos Aires, Argentina. Thirty-three sculptures.
1944. Galería Müller, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1945. Galería Feltrup, Mendoza, Argentina. Seventeen sculptures.
1948. Galería Van Riel. Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 10.
1950. Instituto Superior de Artes, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina.
1951. Plaza 25 de Mayo, Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina. Financed by the Instituto Superior de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Tucumán; and by the "Fogón de los Arrieros", Resistencia.
1952. Galería Viau, Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 20.
1952. Salón Libre of "El Cardón", Guest of honor, Tucumán, Argentina.
1953. XIII Salón de Artes Plásticas, Guest of honor, Tucumán, Argentina, July 8.
1955. "Cervantes Centro del Libro". Tucumán, Argentina, April 22. Exhibition of the Via Crucis of Don Quixote drawings.
1956. Instituto de Artes Plásticas de la Universidad de Chile. Santiago, Chile, March 13. Exhibition of the Via Crucis of Don Quixote drawings.
1956. Galería Van Riel, Buenos Aires, Argentina, July. Exhibition of the Via Crucis of Don Quixote drawings and ten sculptures.
1956. Biblioteca General San Martín, Mendoza, Argentina, December. Exhibition of the Via Crucis of Don Quixote drawings and nineteen sculptures.
1959. Biblioteca General San Martín, Mendoza, Argentina, October. "Ochenta dibujos y una escultura".
1961. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, November. Exhibition of drawings, embossed metal plates and photographs of Easter Island.
1962. Galería D'Elia, Mendoza, Argentina, October. Exhibition of embossed metal plates and drawings of Easter Island.
1963. Galería D'Elia, Mendoza, Argentina, February 20. Exhibition of drawings of Easter Island: Moai hands.
1963. Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Tucumán, Argentina, August. Posthumous exhibition of embossed metal plates, drawings and photographs of Easter Island.
1963. Biblioteca General San Martín, XVIII Salón de Artes Plásticas, Mendoza, Argentina, October-November. Exhibition in honor of Lorenzo Domínguez's memory.
1963. Salón de Artes Plásticas de la Ika, Mendoza, Argentina, November-December. Exhibition in honor of Lorenzo Domínguez's memory.
1965. Dirección Provincial de Cultura, Mendoza, Argentina, March 20. Exhibition in honor of Lorenzo Domínguez's memory. One hundred and sixty sculptures, embossed metal plates and drawings.
1975. Teatro General San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1985. Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Salón de las Artes, San Luis, Argentina, December 2. Ten sculptures and embossed metal plates.
1998. Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno, Mendoza, Argentina, April 16-May 3. Fifty sculptures, twenty embossed metal plates, seventy drawings.
Works in museums
1: Cajal, Madrid, Spain. Bronze head (original plaster: 1929; bronze casting: 1934). Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cf. BR2.
2: Lilión, Santiago, Chile, 1937. Bronze head, 35 cm. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, Cf. BR24.
3: Portrait of the Painter Hernán Gazmuri, Santiago, Chile, 1937. Bronze head, 34 cm. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, Cf. BR26.
4: Pasteur, Santiago, Chile, 1942. Plaster, 48 cm. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, Cf. Y26.
5: Pasteur, Santiago, Chile, 1942. Green stone, 52 cm. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, Cf. P22.
6: Beatriz Capra, Mendoza, Argentina. Bronze (original plaster: 1943; bronze casting: 1944). Head. First portrait of the sculptress, 44 cm. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cf. BR28.
7: Ramón Gómez Cornet, Mendoza, Argentina, 1948. Head in hazelnut stone, aprox. 40 cm. Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Cf. P55.
8: Manuel de Falla, Study for a Monument , Tucumán, Argentina, 1951. Plaster. Museo Manuel de Falla, Alta Gracia, Córdoba, Argentina, Cf. Y100.
9: Christ, Tucumán, Argentina, aprox. 1951. Embossed iron plate, 65 x 50 cm. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cf. BR32.
10: Visitation, Tucumán, Argentina, 1954. Embossed copper plate, 65 x 50 cm. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cf. PM20.
11: The Abuse of Genius, XXIII Fall , Tucumán, Argentina, 1955. Drawing, aprox. 50 x 65 cm. Via Crucis of Don Quixote Series. Museo Emiliano Guiñazú, Mendoza, Argentina, Cf. VCQ32.
Notes
1. L. Domínguez, quoted by D. F. Pró, Tiempo de piedra, p. 143.
2. L. Domínguez, quoted by D. F. Pró, Tiempo de piedra, p. 41.
3. 3. Cf. D. F. Pró, Tiempo de piedra, p. 38.
4. Cf. D. F. Pró, Tiempo de piedra, pp. 38-39.
5. L. Domínguez, quoted by D. F. Pró, Lorenzo Domínguez, p. 31.
6. L. Domínguez, quoted by D. F. Pró, Lorenzo Domínguez, p. 31.
7. L. Domínguez, Easter Island journals, September 9, 1960.
8. Lorenzo Domínguez, Las esculturas de la Isla de Pascua, p. 61.
9. Lorenzo Domínguez, Las esculturas de la Isla de Pascua, pp. 63-64.
10. Lorenzo Domínguez, Easter Island journals, April 6, 1960.
11. Lorenzo Domínguez, Las esculturas de la Isla de Pascua, p. 87.
12. Lorenzo Domínguez, Las esculturas de la Isla de Pascua, p. 63.
13. Lorenzo Domínguez, Easter Island journals, April 3, 1960.
14. Lorenzo Domínguez, Easter Island journals, October 26, 1960.
15. Lorenzo Domínguez, Easter Island journals, December 31, 1960.
16. Lorenzo Domínguez, Easter Island journals, February 25, 1960.