Tag Archives: Dominican painter

Dec 07 2015
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Art, Caribbean, Painting

The Imaginary World of Jorge Severino

Jorge Severino - Debut en sociedad di mi prima Cleotilde. Oil and acrylic on linen.

When he started exhibiting his paintings in the mid-sixties, Jorge Severino from the Dominican Republic didn’t have a clue to what he was doing. Reviewing Severino’s first exhibition in 1966, art critic Contín Aybar commented that “the ten paintings could easily have been created by six different artists. There is no common style in them”. So when Severino sold his first painting for $75, he was astonished that people would even pay for his work. Nowadays his paintings are hard to come by and cost $12,500 or more.

By Jorge Cuartas
‘Do you like Klimt’ by Jorge Severino. Silkscreen
From the ‘Morena’ series by Jorge Severino. Oil and acrylics on linen.

Severino came to his own when he started painting black woman in luxury dresses. Using mostly a combination of oil and acrylics and never an easel, these black society women are decorated with over the top jewelry, silk dresses and red flowers. They stare defiantly at their observers.

Jorge Severino - 'Tía Gertrudis que era amante de Toulouse, haciendo antesala en el Moulin Rouge'. Oil and arylics on linen.

Severino is a representative of the magical realism movement, to which Gabriel García Márquez also belonged. His paintings are based on an imaginary photo album found in the attic with written indications in the margins about the Tia Clotilde in Paris, and the Tio Roque at the Prado Museum in Madrid. Severino uses this family to mock the megalomaniac fantasies of middle and upper classes of the Caribbean.

Jorge Severino 'Prima Johanna posando para Hector Baez'. Oil and acrylics on linen

His brilliance not only lies in transforming the perception of black women’s reality, but also in adding surrealistic elements to his paintings. Look for floating keys, football goal posts, or red fishes swimming in the air as part of his decorations.

Jorge Severino’s paintings have been shown in Europe, Latin America and the United States. He has won several international prizes for his paintings and is considered one of the Master Artists of the Dominican Republic.

Paintings used in this article:

  1. ‘Debut en sociedad di mi prima Cleotilde’, Jorge Severino. Oil and acrylic on linen.
  2. ‘Do you like Klimt’, Jorge Severino. Silkscreen.
  3. ‘Morena’, Jorge Severino.
  4. ‘Tía Gertrudis que era amante de Toulouse, haciendo antesala en el Moulin Rouge’, Jorge Severino. Oil and arylics on linen
  5. ‘Prima Johanna posando para Hector Baez’ by Jorge Severino. Oil and acrylics on linen.
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Nov 07 2015
1 Comment
Art, Caribbean, Dominica

The hierarchy of Colonial Society

Agostinio Brunias 2

His paintings are nowadays viewed as artistically complex visual documents showing European imperial history, but in his time Agostino Brunias (1730-1796) was considered to be subversive for showing interaction between the West Indian natives and the wealthy colonial.

By Jorge Cuartas

Agostino Brunias was born in Italy and moved to London in 1758, where he became a respectable mural painter of stately homes. In 1770, at the height of his career, he left London to settle in Dominica, then one of the newest West Indian colonies of Britain.

Initially commissioned to depict the upper-class plantation life, Brunias soon started to use the forested mountains and rivers of the West Indies as background for paintings of the people around him, who in most cases were colored. He presented a romanticized image of the colonized regions, showing interaction between the natives and the wealthy colonial settlers, while obscuring the realities of plantation slavery.

Agostino Brunias - Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape

For a long time Brunias’ work was deemed valuable only for the classical qualities and elegant poise of his figures. Since the 1980-ties however, his paintings are considered to accurately relate the hierarchy of colonial Caribbean, in a way illustrating the history of slavery.

“Brunias’s images are among the most important relevant pictorial source materials for the study of the historical West Indies. Very few of these images have survived.”

Anthropologist David C. Devenish

The main reason for this change in evaluation are the magnificent detailed textiles worn by Brunias’ subjects. Not only do they correspond with many firsthand European accounts, they also articulate the hierarchy of colonial civilizations. Denim is for field slaves, while extravagant materials and colors are worn by freed slaves, mulattoes and the well-to-do whites. What you wear in a Brunias painting determines your place in Colonial society. The only exception seems to be the head wrap, which is worn by nearly all women regardless of race or social status, suggesting a Creole fashion style.

Agostinio Brunias - A West Indian Flower Girl and Two other Free Women of Color Agostino Brunias - Free Women of Dominica

Examples of Agostino Brunias paintings can be found in private collections and at the British Museum; The Yale Center for British Art; Harvard University; The National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston; The Brooklyn Museum of Art and The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Paintings used in this article:

  1. ‘Linen Market’ (ca 1775), Agostino Brunias, oil on canvas
  2. ‘Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape‘ (ca 1774), Agostino Brunias, oil on canvas
  3. ‘A West Indian Flower Girl and Two other Free Women of Color’, Agostino Brunias, oil on canvas
  4. ‘Free Women of Dominica’, Agostino Brunias, oil on canvas
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