Domingo Ramos Enríquez

Cuban painter, considered one of the great cultivators of landscape painting in the Republic, especially for his views of the famous Viñales valley and other physical scenes of the Island.

He was born in Güines, in the current province of Mayabeque. From childhood he showed his artistic vocation when he drew in his school notebooks whatever his imagination provided, without paying too much attention to the initial disapproval of his teachers; while on weekends he was determined to reproduce the patio of his house. Later, he attempted to paint the landscape near his town, increasingly demonstrating his skills for the craft, so his father, with collective approval, decided to provide him with proper training. In 1907 he entered the Academy of San Alejandro, where he would diligently assimilate the teachings of masters such as Armando Menocal and Leopoldo Romañach. Among the predominant genres, Ramos decided early on for landscape, driven by such representative artists as Santiago Rusiñol, Aureliano de Beruete and others, whose works he could appreciate thanks to Spanish and French magazines, accessible at the School.

He won Honorable Mention in 1909 and, a few years later, won First Prize in the Landscape subject in the 1911-1912 course. He was also awarded in the Fine Arts Competition with his piece "Landscape Study," an event noted by the capital press of that time.

Given the success achieved by his son, the father agreed to finance the continuation of his studies in Europe, so in the summer of 1912 Ramos departed for Madrid and attended the prestigious Academy of San Fernando. Amazed by the Madrid artistic environment, he understood the usefulness of interaction with other students, with their works and ideas, under the tutorship of the masters. He had the opportunity to travel through some of Spain's most striking landscapes, such as the exuberant nature of Asturias in 1915.

Upon returning to Cuba, he began a period of great creative fertility, accompanied by several awards and recognitions (e.g., from the National Academy of Arts and Letters), another trip to Spain, exhibitions in Havana (e.g., at the Association of Painters and Sculptors, Fine Arts Salons between 1919 and 1921). Undoubtedly, the principal experience of this stage was the discovery of the Viñales valley, attractive for its chromatic variety and the peculiarity of the shape of its mogotes. That visual richness, combined with the beauty of its panoramas and expressive possibilities, gave Ramos an original thematic line, extensively exploited by his palette, since in January 1923 he made available to the Havana public 38 canvases that impressed everyone, including specialized critics, who noticed in them a novel vision of island landscape. He showed unsuspected details of Cuban nature, immersed in intense luminosity—which was several times described as excessive—without resorting to chiaroscuro self-imposed by other artists in search of the same luminous effects. That same year he traveled through other sites of Spanish geography, among them Valencia, Murcia, the Catalan coast and Mallorca; in this city he spent a creative season from the fall of 1923 until the spring of 1924, experimenting with other landscape themes such as snow, a real challenge for the Caribbean artist, finally achieved and later celebrated by Joaquín Sorolla. His stay in Mallorca would bring him another exhibition in Cuba, in January 1925, with Mediterranean themes, treated with proper detachment. His acceptance in Madrid's artistic circles was further proof of the high esteem that Ramos enjoyed in the Peninsula; in fact, the Museum of Modern Art obtained his work "The Colossus on the Summit," one of the most outstanding of all his works. Furthermore, in 1929 he obtained the Gold Medal and Diploma of Honor at the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville.

Established again in Havana, he began another enriching period that included several representations of the Viñales valley, which he visited once more; several national and foreign awards that consolidated his prestige; numerous participations in artistic events, both in Cuba and abroad; as well as the beginning of educational work at the Academy of San Alejandro. His influence on the student body was notable, especially on the generation of the 1930s, during which he was promoted to full professor of the chair of Artistic Anatomy (1931) and was also in charge of the Landscape chair due to the leave granted to Menocal at that time (1937). He knew how to impart dynamism to teaching and grant expressive freedom to his students, as he decided to teach landscape classes outside the school grounds, moving to the Botanical Garden.

The way Ramos handled tropical light elicited opinions focused on the degree of fidelity in the transposition of this resource to painting, as some observed certain reminiscences of his European period. Although it was not a response of his to such considerations, the artist moved away from Viñales and extensive views, and in the early 1940s he turned toward another way of understanding landscape by becoming interested in the vegetation surrounding the Almendares, the river that runs through the city of Havana. Precisely in 1943 he obtained by opposition the full position of his chair with one of his most emblematic pieces from that period: "Afternoon at Río Cristal." The works produced convinced critics of a less subjective representation and more adjusted to the physical-environmental conditions of the Island, alongside an unprecedented profusion of color, in keeping with that much-acclaimed adjustment.

In 1946 he was elected director of the Academy, although he resigned immediately to dedicate himself to his art. In fact, he temporarily recovered the landscape theme of Viñales, although this time he preferred the small format and certain views of the valley. He also approached the suggestive vegetation of the locality of Calabazar, where he had previously been, attracted by the diverse tonalities of green and the richness of the chromatic range, thus demonstrating once again his capacity to capture, in the impressionist manner, the light typical of our climatic conditions.

The emergence of historical avant-gardes and the so-called "new art" brought with it a reaction to traditional forms of conceiving the artistic fact, as was the case with Domingo Ramos, so concerned with formal accuracy and adherence to natural models in his figurative works. Therefore, around 1940, specialized critics described his work as excessively mimetic, given the thrust of the new political and social commitments demanded by the turbulent historical circumstances of the Island in those years. On the other hand, he entered the National Academy of Arts and Letters in 1942.

In November 1956 he was appointed Professor Emeritus of the Academy. He was also a corresponding academician of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Cádiz, a member of the Royal Society of London and of the Association of American Writers and Artists of Havana. He died of a terminal illness on December 23, 1956, when his inclusion in the galaxy of the greatest painters of the Cuban countryside was already inevitable. Works such as "The Herd of Caiguanabo" (Prize at the XVIII Fine Arts Salon, 1936), "Old Mamoncillos," "Flowery April" (Bronze Medal at the World's Fair in New York, 1939) and others, are classics in this sense.

Landscape as a genre had emerged in Cuba in the mid-nineteenth century, after the theme of the city had been extensively addressed in eighteenth-century engraving and in the lithography of the first third of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, landscape followed two fundamental paths: the academic and that ascribed to new expressive tendencies. The work of Domingo Ramos is situated, as is known, in the first of these routes, and enriched the contributions of leading figures in Cuban landscape painting: Romañach, Menocal, José Joaquín Tejada, Antonio Rodríguez Morey and others. His firm technique, his keen analytical sense of the object, and his tireless industriousness made him an exceptional artist.

He left us an extensive body of work, entirely dedicated to exalting the natural beauty of his country, today dispersed in numerous private collections, in some public institutions in Cuba, Spain and the United States, among them the National Museum of Fine Arts, which possesses 43 pieces, some of which are included in the permanent collection.