|
El Nuevo Herald,
Translation of Spanish
article by Norma Niurka
Aplausos Section, El Nuevo Herald, 1-19-06
Dopico Lerner, 35 Years of Art
"A painter doesn't need to be eccentric to be noticed."
The Nordic appearance of the artist Vicente Dopico Lerner is deceptive, as
is his calm demeanor. He is not sociable, he seldom goes out, and his
reputation for being a night owl is based solely on his tendency to paint
at all hours of the night. He may appear to be a hermit, but he has sought
adventure on his travels and takes pleasure in new landscapes; he appears
stoic, but inside he carries a volcano of anxieties and uncertainties
which compels him to explore life.
Dopico concurs with this appraisal of his persona by making a more
emphatic statement than the original suggestion: "It's true; I don't look
like what I paint."
He elaborates: "That is in direct relationship with the adventure which
has been the renewal, the constant reinventing of oneself. Although to a
certain extent my painting is very autobiographical, my outward appearance
doesn't convey what my painting conveys. It's a paradox."
He says that he does not need devices to call attention to his work.
"A painter doesn't need to be eccentric to be noticed. Matta's painting
was savage, he fought against the establishment, but nevertheless, he was
very gentle," he adds.
Dopico, who arrived in the United States in 1964, is an excellent
water-colorist and draftsman who explores internal and external worlds
with the same enthusiasm. I find a special lyricism in his work, a
subtlety which reveals his phantoms in the midst of furious color and
intriguing images.
His physical characteristics may have been inherited from his grandfather,
a German-Jewish multilingual violinist who emigrated to Chile after World
War I. Later on, en route to New York, his grandfather stopped off in Cuba
and ended up staying on the island permanently as a merchant in the Jewish
section of Havana.
That is where Dopico was born. I met him in the early 70's when we both
lived in New York. Years later, in Miami, I watched the artist who had
received a Cintas Scholarship evolve. After graduating from St. Thomas
University, he taught art for several years until he devoted himself
entirely to a body of work which has brought him recognition in
innumerable exhibitions.
From his earlier nude women and perplexed and distant faces, his work has
given way to more aggressive faces, which he calls subversive.
The art critic, Carlos M. Luis, recognizes the evolution of Dopico. "I met
him during the initial phase of his work and I have seen a definite
progression in it, not only in the study of color; in his watercolors this
is manifested in transparent form," the critic states. He previously wrote
about the artist: "Dopico lets our imagination flow; he invites us to
embark upon an intense and fruitful journey full of surprises."
The artist understands his evolution as "the synthesis of combined
experience" and gives vital significance to the watercolors he started
working with professionally in 1980.
"From a more pleasing painting style in the 70's and 80's I have arrived
at this not so pleasing one," he notes. "Before I prepared the format
more, now I don't plan anything, I work more dynamically and
aesthetically."
A sample of the artwork created during Dopico's 35-year career can be
admired in the book La Subversión de La Imagen which was presented to the
public last night at Books and Books, in Coral Gables. The 290-page
bilingual edition has 200 reproductions of his paintings, watercolors and
ceramics; and a study by the Dominican art historian, Candido Gerón, who
has been familiar with his work for a decade.
"Dopico is an artist of great sensitivity, a symbolist," expresses Gerón,
by telephone from Santo Domingo. "His work has opened up to an
international audience because of his mastering of the composition and the
philosophical and poetic world which it encompasses. It is a style of
painting which throws us off a precipice, the one of memory, where the
emotional and psychological achieve a symbiosis, evoking a catharsis."
Gerón, his country's ex-ambassador to France and Mexico, is the author of
published works on Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Jose Luis Cuevas; and of
the only encyclopedia of Dominican aesthetic art.
Leona Lazar, Director of the Art Student League of Denver, ex-Director of
the Mizel Museum and the Museum of the Americas in the same city, got to
know the work of Dopico when he participated in a show there along with
Baruj Salinas and Mario Bencomo, a decade ago. Although she has not seen
Dopico again, she still remembers his work vividly.
"With the intensity of his pallet, the dream-like effect and the
sensuality of his figures, there is an energy, a drama, sometimes in
violent tones, which disquiets and, on occasion, disturbs," she explained.
According to the expert, when one passes in front of a work of Dopico's,
it is necessary to go back and see it over and over again in order to
discover its multiple layers. In the book which has just been published
one will easily be able to review and examine these mysteries.
|
