SOWER OF FANTASY AND LIGHT.

• Author: Bianco, Adriana
• Position: Brief Article

Santo Domingo is a country "along the same path as the sun," Dominican poet Pedro Mir has said. Those who visit the Dominican Republic, which often takes the name of its capital city, become enchanted with its beaches, its colonial architecture, the natural graciousness of its people, its fruits, and its sunlight.

Diverse cultural strains commingle here. The indigenous is woven throughout the Spanish colonial legacy, which engendered the first institutions in the Americas. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the influence of Europe was dominant, yet African cultures have thoroughly blended their music and rituals into these other perspectives.

This ethnic and cultural pluralism has enriched the lifeblood of Quisqeya, as this island was known to its original inhabitants, and it serves as a lodestar for artists who disinter their past and their landscape, their identity, and their Dominican essence.

The Caribbean contribution to the plastic arts is nothing new. However, interest in the study and promotion of Caribbean artistic expression and appreciation for its special vitality have surged in tandem with greater general awareness of the importance of Latin American art.

Dionisio Blanco is a distinguished exponent amid a growing tide of Dominican pictography. Beaming and extroverted, Blanco is an indomitable conversationalist.

"I believe that we Latin Americans are paradoxical creatures, who live lives of strong paradoxes," he says, "and I attempt to capture them in my painting, in this hesitation between reality and myth. Man and paradox are joined by the force of nature, the profuse tropical landscape, and the intense interplay of light and color."

Blanco was drawn to painting at an early age. He recalls being "thrilled" when he first saw the work of Spanish muralist Jose Vela Zanetti, who created monumental works in Santo Domingo. "He was painting the Church of Saint Christopher, which I consider to be the Sistine Chapel of the Caribbean. A musician friend of mine put me in touch with the School of Fine Arts, and thus I began my studies and I realized that painting was my life."

Later Blanco taught drawing at the Escuela de Arte Candido Bido and at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo. While teaching he began to exhibit in New York, Miami, as well as in Santo Domingo. In 1981 he was invited to participate in the Third Ibero-American Art Biennial held in Mexico City; in 1987, the collective exhibition of the Museum of Art in...