EXHIBITION 20 NOVEMBER SEPTEMBER 2013 ÓSCAR DOMÍNGUEZ: Decalcomanias and Objects

EXHIBITION 20 NOVEMBER 2012 – 2 SEPTEMBER 2013 ÓSCAR DOMÍNGUEZ: Decalcomanias and Objects Óscar Domínguez The trajectory of Óscar Domínguez’s (190...
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EXHIBITION 20 NOVEMBER 2012 – 2 SEPTEMBER 2013

ÓSCAR DOMÍNGUEZ: Decalcomanias and Objects

Óscar Domínguez

The trajectory of Óscar Domínguez’s (1906, La Laguna, Tenerife – 195 7, Paris, France) artistic career has two particularly interesting facets— which did not necessarily come about separately—centring respectively on the evocation of elements native to his homeland, and the development of Surrealist techniques. Of particular note among the forms Domínguez worked on within the André Breton-led movement, are his decalcomanias and objects, which provided a very fertile ground not only for Domínguez’s own works but also for other major figures in Surrealism, such as Max Ernst. The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is paying homage to the Tenerife-born painter by bringing together in a single space a representative selection of these two methods of production, decalcomanias and objects, both of which were so closely linked to the ultimate Surrealist process, automatism. The Surrealist object, or “object with a symbolic function” to use Salvador Dalí’s vocabulary, would almost certainly never have come into being were it not for a number of precedents deeply rooted in the absolute avantgarde movements of the 20th century. In 1912, Pablo Picasso‘s Nature morte à la chaise cannée (Musée Picasso, Paris), while

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taking one more step in the construction of Cubism, is already incorporating the object into the picture—a piece of oilcloth resembling the lattice work of a chair seat and hemp rope instead of the traditional picture frame—giving it a sense of autonomy that it had not had until then in pictorial representation. This is the first step in the process of the desacralisation of painting that would be definitively established by Marcel Duchamp; but it is worth noting that around this time, a matter of only a few months later and still in 1912, Georges Braque would be introducing papier collé into Cubism, using a piece of industrially manufactured wallpaper. It is Duchamp who stands as the demiurge officiating at the ceremony, establishing the primacy of Leonardo da Vinci’s cosa mentale, the concept of art, over the finished work, materialised in a product. This is evidenced by his first ready-made, Roue de bicyclette, in 1913. In 1924, shortly after the first Surrealist Manifesto came out, Breton made the first mention of the Surrealist object in his Introduction au discours sur le peu de réalité1, proposing “to fabricate, in so far as possible, certain objects which are approached only in

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Le Tireur, 1934 Object. Painted plaster, metal objects and painted glass 48 x 21 x 31,5 cm Colecciones ICO, Madrid

dreams and which seem no more useful than enjoyable.” The Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme provides a painstakingly thorough list of the wide variety of this kind of creation2. Breton’s followers were quick to become involved in attempts at this new kind of creativity, and outstanding work was produced by Meret Oppenheim, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Alberto Giacometti, Victor Brauner and Leonor Fini. Among the Spanish participants, led by Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, there were many others, both from the mainland and beyond, who made their own contributions, such as Leandre Cristòfol, Ángel Ferrant, Antoni Clavé, Eudald Serra and Eugenio Granell.

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Óscar Domínguez was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic cultivators of the new Surrealist “genre”, even before he joined Breton’s ranks, always adding a significant amount of humour to all his works. When the Exposition surréaliste d’objets opened at the Charles Ratton Gallery in Paris in 1936, the Tenerife-born critic and major supporter of the movement Eduardo Westerdahl stated that the pieces Domínguez had exhibited testified to the fact that “[…] reality still offers an enormous field for experimentation, the starting point, of course, being the introversion of the system being followed: […] objects are not what they represent, but rather something distinct from what they are.” Once divested of their original meaning, in the hands of the artist objects can take on a new scope that approaches the absurd, which, as opposed to the destructive nature inherent in Dadaism, continues to add to the construction of the Surrealist universe. Another Paris exhibition, the Galerie Beaux-Arts Exposition internationale du Surréalisme in 1938, included among other objects one of the same pieces now being shown at the Museo Reina Sofía: Le Tireur (1934), from the Colecciones ICO, Madrid. Marcel Jean (1900, La Charité-sur-Loire, France – 1993, Louveciennes, France) referred to his piece, along with other products of Domínguez’s imagination, as an evocation the artist’s experiences in Paris: “When he visited bazaars or flea markets, he loaded himself down with cast-off loot, and a reproduction of the Tireur d’épine became Le Tireur, its head and legs amputated and sliced through with a piece of glass; El dactilógrafo held out two charming little ivory

Óscar Domínguez

hands (two back-scratchers) atop glass pots; Exacta sensibilidad was a white sphere from which a hand reached round, stabbing a hypodermic syringe into the sphere; other structures were stretched out to fit into a picture, extending beyond its frame, creating a grouping—of which only the painting remains—of the object-painting synthesis. In the Marché aux Puces Domínguez came across a huge unusable musical instrument, which the seller claimed was a bigle [bugle]. With a female head on top and painted white, this wreck became the most splendid, most novel evening dress; the object was bought by a Californian woman. Many of these small, fragile and—it has to be said— upsetting masterpieces, all created in a fever of inspiration, have simply disappeared.”3 As well as Le Tireur, the Museo Reina Sofía is currently also showing: Jeux (1937), from the Museum’s own Collection, the object-paintings Pérégrinations de Georges Hugnet (1935), which also belong to the Museum, and 1955 (1955), lent by the TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes), which completes this small group of objets trouvés that were later interpreted by the artist. Breton and Paul Éluard acknowledged the importance of Domínguez’s objects when they included photographic reproductions of some of them in the renowned Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme4, which served as a catalogue for the aforementioned Exposition Internationale at the Galerie BeauxArts. It was Breton and Éluard who went one step further in the dictionary by actually attributing the Tenerife-born artist with the creation of one of the major processes of the Surrealist movement, decalcomania, which is listed as “procédé découvert par Óscar

4 Domínguez en 1936.”5 Breton continues on the subject, expanding on its meaning in the magazine Minotaure6, where he refers to the new technique as “decalcomania with no preconceived object” and the “decalcomania of desire”: “… [everything] … is now returned to us as a result of a recent communication from our dear friend Óscar Domínguez, in which surrealism is pleased to behold a new source of emotion for everyone. Children have traditionally enjoyed folding sheets of paper after blotting them with wet ink so as to produce the illusion of animal or vegetable entities or growths, but the elementary technique of which children are capable is far from exhausting the resources of such a process. In particular the use of undiluted ink excludes any surprises in terms of ‘substance’ and limits the result to a contoured design which suffers from a certain monotony resulting from the repetition of symmetrical forms on either side of an axis. Certain wash-drawings by Victor Hugo seem to provide evidence of systematic explorations in the direction which concerns us here; certainly an extraordinary power of suggestion is obviously expected to emanate from the entirely involuntary mechanical details which predominate, but the results are mostly limited to Chinese shadows and cloudy apparitions. Óscar Domínguez’ discovery brings precious advice on the method to follow in obtaining ideal fields of interpretation. Here we can rediscover in all their purity the rocks and willows of Arthur Rackham which enchanted us when we were about to leave childhood behind. Once again, we are offered a recipe within everybody’s grasp, a recipe which demands to be included

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among the ‘Secrets of the magical surrealist art’ and which may be formulated as follows: TO OPEN ONE’S WINDOW AT WILL UPON THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES IN THIS OR ANY OTHER WORLD

Pérégrinations de Georges Hugnet, 1935 Object painting. Assemblage of wood, iron and oil 41 x 33 x 12 cm Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Décalcomanie interprétée, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper. 17 x 17 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

With a broad brush, spread some black gouache, more or less diluted in places, on a sheet of white glazed paper and then cover this immediately with a similar sheet which you will press down lightly with the back of your hand. Take this upper sheet by one edge and peel it off slowly as you would do with an ordinary transfer, then continue to reapply it and lift it away again until the colour is almost dry. What you have in your hands now is perhaps nothing more than Leonardo’s paranoiac ancient wall, but it is this wall perfected. All you need do now is study the resulting image long enough for you to find a title that conveys the reality you have discovered in it, and you can be quite sure of having expressed yourself in the most completely personal and valid manner.” Breton saw Domínguez’s discovery as a major milestone in Surrealism, and in his text Des tendances les plus récentes de la peinture surréaliste7, in which he developed the concept of automatism as pictorial process, he states that “absolute Automatism” could only be achieved after the appearance of Domínguez’s decalcomania and Wolfgang Paalen’s fumage. In Genèse et perspective artistiques du surréalisme, first published in 19418, Breton was to focus once again on the transcendence of the process that Domínguez had created, although he did implicitly acknowledge certain of its more distant precedents.

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Óscar Domínguez

Décalcomanie interprétée avec abrelatas, 1936. Decalcomania. Oil on canvas. 20 x 60 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

Images that emerge unbidden from the subconscious—blots, shapes, deep-sea abysses, abrupt landscapes—are sometimes reminiscent of experiences told of in the classical world, such as those referred to in the first century AD by Apollonius of Tyana in his treatise on Divination, when he says that observation of the shapes formed by the clouds as they cross the sky can serve as a source of inspiration for his clairvoyant predictions. So the artist, in his role of medium or explorer of the collective subconscious, can to some extent be compared to the fortune-teller. Along the same lines, there are Leonardo da Vinci’s famous statements—quoted by Breton—concerning the accidental marks on walls, when the Florentine master gives some advice on artistic practice in his Treatise on Painting: “[…] By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions, landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects […].”9 But where Leonardo perhaps comes

closest to the spirit of decalcomania is another of the phrases in his famous Treatise: “[…] in the jumble of things the mind is aroused to new inventions. ”10 In the area of possible precedents for decalcomania, mention should be made of Alexander Cozens, a Russian artist resident in England, who, in the late eighteenth century, used Leonardo’s teachings when he published an essay entitled A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Composition of Landscape (1785), which consisted of stimulating the imagination through randomly produced blots on paper. In Spain, the painters Jenaro Pérez Villaamil and Eugenio Lucas applied the “Cozens system” to some of their creations. Similarly, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the doctor and poet Justinus Kerner invented what was called Klecksographie—from the German ‘Klecks’ meaning blot, blotch, splotch etc.—in which he used his pen to interpret and retouch the ink blots in his writing caused by his failing sight.

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Another important case is that of George Sand, who, in the last few years of her life produced a series of pieces similarly related to all the artistic experiments that would eventually lead to Domínguez’s discovery. Her Dendrites—also known as works done “à la dendrite” or “squashed watercolours”—were done using a process consisting of pressing two sheets of pigment-covered paper together and then, “with the aid of imagination”, interpreting and working on the resulting blotches until they were identifiable with completely figurative motifs. As the writer herself said: “This blotting produces strange ramifications, where I can imagine woods, forest or lakes, and I can paint over these shapes merely produced by accident.”11 Also in France, Victor Hugo combined his literary work with a certain devotion to drawing, which he had done since infancy. His inkblot (‘taches’) compositions, which he produced by turning sheets of paper on a table, captivated the Surrealists to such an extent that the legendary exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, at the MoMA in New York in 1936 actually included one of

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the writer’s wash paintings, listed in the catalogue as Satanic Head (1860-70)12. However, on this same subject it does seem to be a proven fact that Breton and his followers were unaware of the work of Dr. Rorschach and his famous tests, despite the fact that they had taken place from 1921. The difference between all these examples and Domínguez’s own decalcomania lies, to a large extent, in the value that each of them attached to their productions. For some of the above (George Sand, even Victor Hugo), their experiments were almost games of no real importance; a simple diversion. For others, such as Cozens, it was an auxiliary method employed to improve his artistic output from a technical point of view. Only the Surrealists, with Breton at their head, appreciated the importance of Domínguez’s discovery, considering it to be one of the purest manifestations of automatism, the basic principle by which one could achieve direct access to the world of the oneiric and the formless.

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Óscar Domínguez

Although Breton dates the invention of decalcomania to 1936, Óscar Domínguez had made his first inroads into the technique in 1934, at the time he came into contact with the Surrealist inner sanctum. Domínguez’s first attempt in the area that year was to illustrate the front and back covers of a publication by Eduardo Westerdahl on the painter Willi Baumeister, published by Gaceta de Arte; these illustrations are currently part of the exhibition. Yet Domínguez did not begin to really dedicate himself to the area until 1936, as Breton suggested in the Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme13, which is proof of the fact that Breton cannot have referred to the process during the lectures he gave in Prague and Tenerife in 193514. So 1936 is the year that decalcomanias are included in their own right, alongside the most significant works of Surrealism, in the movement’s international exhibitions, such as the aforementioned Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism15. In 1937, Domínguez produced one of the technique’s most famous and celebrated pieces, Arbre (TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes), also known as Drago, “the representation of a fossil found on a mineral surface, a tree specimen that Breton was quick to dub ‘Jurassic’ in 1935, when he visited Tenerife. We immediately see before us the solarised photographs of Raoul Ubac, in which a fossil shape rises up from the bottom of the picture, like the phantasmagorical face of a being from the distant past. In fact, this tree of life’s presence is majestic, its branches and spearshaped leaves spread across the whole surface of the paper, yet it never stops being an actual fossil, plant-life from before man, a descendent of the ‘Gigante de Arautava’—the most widely admired dragon tree of all time, ‘le plus grand dragonnier du monde’ to quote André

Le Pont, 1937 Decalcomania. Ink on paper. 65 x 50 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

Nicolás, 1937. Serie Nicolás Decalcomania. Gouache on paper. 65 x 50 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

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Breton—something so old and vague that it can only be revealed to us through the liquid forms of decalcomania. […] Noted by travellers to the Canary Islands and drawn by J. J. Williams, this tree is no illusion or the product of popular imagination. It really existed; it was visited and venerated by the population, chroniclers and scholars who made their way to the Domingo de Franchy gardens at the Villa de La Orotava just to see it. It was only revealed to André Breton in dreams, as it had been destroyed in a storm half a century before his visit to Tenerife.”16

Les Siphons, 1938 Decalcomania. Oil on canvas. 61 x 49,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

Apparition sur la mer, 1939 Decalcomania. Oil on canvas. 45 x 38 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

After “decalcomania with no preconceived object” and the “decalcomania of desire”, came the second series of works done using the process, the “automatic decalcomania with premeditated interpretation”. Around 1935 Domínguez set up in his first studio in Montmartre, in the Rue des Abbesses, where he lived with the pianist Roma. This was also the time that he was going to the Surrealist group’s meetings at the Café de la Place Blanche, where he met Breton, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and Marcel Jean. Together with Marcel Jean, whose studio was close to Domínguez’s, near the Place Clichy, Domínguez produced a group of more elaborate works than those he had first done working alone. The basic technique was augmented with drawings, stencils and even cardboard cut-outs to produce the two main motifs: a lion—particularly the lion-bicycle, produced by Domínguez17—and a window, produced by Marcel Jean. Working together on a number of combinations, these two subjects were systematically placed against foggy backgrounds and overcast skies under the generic title of Grisou18. As Jean-Luc Mercié (JLM) says,

Óscar Domínguez

“[…] Óscar Domínguez and Marcel Jean had made two key Surrealist subjects their own. […] By 1938, the group would consider them so important that each would be the object of a specific entry in the Dictionnaire abrégé. […] What is more, the Grisou works took hold of Breton’s imagination and, in an attempt to define the ‘Surrealist situation of the object’, he refers, for all of its impossibility, to the flying lion, the ideal incarnation of the Surrealist object that had already appeared in Dalí’s paranoiac method. The most surprising thing inevitably continues to be the text Dream Accomplishment and Genesis of an Animated Painting, the account of a dream in which Breton watches as Domínguez paints a series of lions practising fellatio.”19 The publisher Guy Lévis Mano (GLM) became interested in the Grisou, and tried to collect them all together in order to publish them in 1937, in an album with a foreword by Breton. However, the project failed for financial reasons. Many years later, in 1989, it was Jean-Luc Mercié who finally managed to successfully complete the project, keeping to the original plan and reproducing the 16 plates in phototype alongside the original monotypes, in a limited edition of 25. The work was concluded when Marcel Jean specified on the back of each of the decalcomanias whether it was his, Óscar Domínguez’s or done by both20. Previous to this compilation, the Grisou had been exhibited individually in major exhibitions such as Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage, which opened at the MoMA, New York, in 196821, later travelling to Los Angeles and Chicago. The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía has now brought together a significant selection representing not only the Grisou of

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Domínguez and Marcel Jean, but the whole range of decalcomanias done by Domínguez alone, making a total of around thirty pieces. From 1937, Domínguez applied the principles of decalcomania to oils, although his earliest attempts in this area actually date back to 1934, seen in the painting Souvenir de mon île, which is comparable in both quality and size to his most representative works Machine à coudre électro-sexuelle (1934, private collection) and Cueva de guanches (1935, Museo Reina Sofía). Souvenir de mon île is a key work in Domínguez’s iconography and biographical trajectory for the inclusion of a number of local elements in its composition and the interesting fact that it is the first of his paintings to include the decalcomania process. Most of the paintings that use the form are inspired by motifs reminiscent of the painter’s homeland, whether representation evoking volcanic lava or fragments of scenes that seem to be dark and overcast seas. Paradoxically however, they are also “inner landscapes”, as the Canary Island-born poet Domingo López Torres termed them22, taken directly from unconscious or forgotten childhood episodes, along the lines of the fundamental theories of Surrealism and particularly psychic automatism. Mainly due to the generous collaboration of the TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes), the Museo Reina Sofía has collected together for the occasion a small but fascinating group of this kind of work by Domínguez: Les Siphons (1938), Apparition sur la mer (1939), Apocalypse (1956), Delphes (1957) and Nature morte (1954, Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid). The decalcomania process caused a furore among the followers of Breton, who, along

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Nature morte, 1954 Decalcomania. Oil on cardboard stuck to canvas 50 x 65 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

with his wife Jacqueline, was one of the first to get involved in the growth of the new practice. He was joined by Georges Hugnet, Yves Tanguy and Marcel Jean, who would later team up with Domínguez in the production of these works. The final result of all this output was published in 1936, in the aforementioned issue 8 of Minotaure, the edition in which Surrealism’s leader attributed the method’s discovery to Óscar Domínguez. Tanguy, however, did very little in terms of applying the new model. He put it into practice only once in Marcel Jean’s studio, and the resulting decalcomania is currently part of the collection of the MoMA in New York. He tried it again three more times, but the result was almost identical to his paintings, so he decided to do without the new technique in future. Max Ernst was quite the opposite, and very successfully applied the paper-based decalco-

mania principle to canvas. The stages he followed were very similar to those practised by Domínguez, spreading highly diluted oils over certain areas of the canvas and pressing down on them with another surface, to produce a series of blots that he could then interpret and modify. The sizes of the formats were enlarged, and there emerged a series of paintings whose common denominator was a disturbing, metamorphic landscape, always along the lines of the oneiric visions suggested by Surrealist ideas. The first painting completed by Max Ernst using this process dates from 1937 (Le Triomphe de l’amour, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), which was followed by a series of works filled with mystery and dramatic tension, dating mainly from the 1940s, such as Arbre solitaire et arbres conjugaux (1940, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), L’Europe après la pluie (1940-1942, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut), Napoléon

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Óscar Domínguez

Apocalypse, 1956. Decalcomania. Oil on board. 89 x 146 cm. Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

dans le désert (1941, MoMA, Nueva York) and the Microbes series, a set of small works, some of which were published alongside various poems written by Ernst himself in the volume Sept Microbes vus à travers un tempérament23. Decalcomania would go on to become part of the repertory of many followers of Surrealism, such as the French artist Max Bucaille, who

applied the formula to glass in order to make light projections, Polish painter Hans Bellmer, who used the technique in his disturbing selfportrait (1942, Collection Scharf-Gerstenberg), or, in Mexico, Remedios Varo, the visionary creator of poetic, evocative compositions populated by ghostly creatures. Paloma Esteban Leal

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NOTES

1

André Breton, Oeuvres Completes (Volume II), Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1992, p. 277.

2 André Breton and Paul Éluard, Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme, republished by José Corti, Paris, 1969, pp. 18-19. 3 “Recuerdos sobre Oscar Domínguez”, in El Surrealismo entre Viejo y Nuevo Mundo. Las Palmas: Cabildo Insular / Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, 1989, pp. 54-55. 4 André Breton and Paul Éluard, op. cit., p. 15.

13 André Breton and Paul Éluard, op. cit. pág 9. 14 Emmanuel Guigon, “Al filo del abismo”, in Sueños de tinta. Óscar Domínguez y la decalcomanía del deseo. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, 1993, p. 17 [exh. cat.]. 15 Op. cit., nº cat. 326 [exh. cat.]. 16 Isidro Hernández Gutiérrez, “Una fuente petrificada por los placeres del vértigo”, in Óscar Domínguez. Decalcomanías. Madrid: Galería Guillermo de Osma, 2006, pp. 5-6 [exh. cat.].

7 Minotaure, Paris, num. 12-13, May 1939, p. 16.

17 Domínguez deals with this same motif, although he replaces the lion with a horse, crossing through a bicycle in his object-painting Pérégrinations de Georges Hugnet (1935, Museo Reina Sofía) which, as has been mentioned, is also included in the current exhibition.

8 Republished in Le surréalisme et la peinture suivi de Genése et perspective artistiques du surréalisme et de Fragments inédits, New York: Brentano’s, 1945, p. 102.

18 According to the Spanish Royal Academy’s dictionary, “Grisú” is a gaseous mixture of methane and air, which is highly inflammable and explosive which is released in coalmines.

9 El tratado de la pintura por Leonardo da Vinci y los tres libros que sobre el mismo arte escribió Leon Bautista Alberti. Traducidos é ilustrados con algunas notas por Don Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva, Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1827, pp. 8-9.

19 “La parte del león”, in Sueños de tinta. Óscar Domínguez y la decalcomanía del deseo. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, 1993, p. 20 [exh. cat.].

5 Ibid. p. 9. 6 André Breton, “D’une décalcomanie sans object préconçu (décalcomanie du désir)”, Minotaure, Paris, num. 8, June 1936, p. 18.

10 Ibid., p. 9. 11 George Sand and Henri Amic, George Sand. Mes Souvenirs. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1893, p. 24. 12 Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, ed. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936, cat. nº 133 [exh. cat.].

20 Jean-Luc Mercié, op. cit., p. 21 [exh. cat.]. 21 William S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968, p. 139, nº cat. 205 [exh. cat.]. 22 Isidro Hernández Gutiérrez, op. cit., p. 8. 23 Paris: Les Éditions Cercle des Arts, 1953.

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Óscar Domínguez

List of works Óscar Domínguez — Maqueta para la monografía sobre Willi Baumeister, escrita por Eduardo Westerdahl. Cover and back, 1934 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 27,5 x 21 cm c.u. Colección José María Lafuente, Santander — Le Tireur, 1934 Object. Painted plaster, metal objects and painted glass 48 x 21 x 31,5 cm Colecciones ICO, Madrid — Homenaje a «Gaceta de Arte», ca. 1934 Decalcomania. Gouache and collage on paper 8 x 11 cm Colección José María Lafuente, Santander — Pérégrinations de Georges Hugnet, 1935 Object painting. Assemblage of wood, iron and oil 41 x 33 x 12 cm Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía — Décalcomanie avec figure, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 19,5 x 13,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Lion blanc de l’Espagne, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 20 x 25 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife — Lion bondissant, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 20 x 25 cm Colección Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno Cabildo de Gran Canaria — Lion noir, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 20 x 25 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife — Lion noir-blanc, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 18,4 x 24,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife — Composition, ca. 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache and grattage on paper 21,5 x 37 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

— Décalcomanie interprétée, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 17 x 17 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Arbre, 1937 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 65 x 50 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Décalcomanie interprétée avec abrelatas, 1936 Decalcomania. Oil on canvas 20 x 60 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Jeux, 1937 Object. Assemblage of wood, wire, paint, metal, brush, toy gun, bellows and feathers 21 x 50 x 21 cm Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

— Lion-Bicyclette, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 20 x 31 cm Colección Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

— Nicolás, 1937 Serie Nicolás Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 65 x 50 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

— Lion-Bicyclette, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 15,5 x 22 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid — Lion blanc, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 20 x 25 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Nicolás, 1937 Serie Nicolás Decalcomania. Ink on paper 65 x 50 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

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Óscar Domínguez / Marcel Jean — Le Pont, 1937 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 65 x 50 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife — Les Siphons, 1938 Decalcomania. Oil on canvas 61 x 49,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Décalcomanie, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 20,2 x 25 cm Colección Karim Hoss — La Fenêtre, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 20,5 x 25 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Figure féminine, ca. 1938 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 19,5 x 13,5 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

— Le Lion, la Fenêtre, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 22 x 28,5 cm Colección Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno Cabildo de Gran Canaria

— Apparition sur la mer, 1939 Decalcomania. Oil on canvas 45 x 38 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Le Lion - La Fenêtre, 1936 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 22 x 28 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

— Deux têtes, 1949 Decalcomania. Gouache on paper 30,5 x 40 cm Colección particular, cortesía Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

— Le Lion, la Plaine, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 10,5 x 12,7 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Nature morte, 1954 Decalcomania. Oil on cardboard stuck to canvas 50 x 65 cm Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

— Lion vert, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 21,5 x 28,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— 1955, 1955 Object painting. Copper sheet and can opener mounted on wood 24,5 x 34,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Lion vert dans la fenêtre, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 21,5 x 28,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Apocalypse, 1956 Decalcomania. Oil on board 89 x 146 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife — Delphes, 1957 Decalcomania. Oil on canvas 38 x 55 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

— Grisou. Le Lion - La Fenêtre, 1937/1990 Artist’s book 22 x 27,5 cm Colección Guillermo de Osma, Madrid

Documents in this room are part of the Colección José María Lafuente, Santander

Acknowledgements

Exhibition

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía wishes to sincerely express its gratitude to the following individuals and institutions:

Project and curatorship Paloma Esteban

– José Ignacio Abeijón – Archivo Histórico Provincial de Tenerife – Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno Cabildo de Gran Canaria – Colecciones ICO, Madrid – Colección Karim Hoss – Galería Guillermo de Osma, Madrid – Alicia Gómez Gómez – Ofelia Margarita González Izquierdo – Isidro Hernández Gutiérrez – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl, Tenerife And particularly to: – TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife – Colección José María Lafuente, Santander

Coordination Reyes Carretero Almudena Cruz Coordination of the Collections Exhibitions María de Prada Restoration Beatriz Alonso Paloma Calopa Storage José Manuel Lara Enrique Sanz Pureza Villaescuerna Registrar Victoria Fernández-Layos

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Sabatini Building Santa Isabel, 52 Nouvel Building Ronda de Atocha (with Emperador Carlos V Square) 28012 Madrid Museum Hours From Monday to Saturday including holidays from 10:00 am to 9:00 pm Sundays from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm* (* From 2:30 pm onwards only the Collection galleries can be visited) Closed Tuesdays Galleries close 15 minutes prior to Museum closing Tel: (34) 91 774 10 00 Fax: (34) 91 774 10 56 www.museoreinasofia.es Brochure Production, design and layout: Julio López Coordination: Ruth Gallego Editing and publishing: Ángel Serrano Photographs: Joaquín Cortés / Román Lores Cover: Óscar Domínguez / Marcel Jean Lion vert, 1936 Decalcomania. Ink on paper 21,5 x 28,5 cm Colección TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes Cabildo Insular de Tenerife

© Óscar Domínguez, Vegap, Madrid, 2013 Legal Deposit: M-4083-2013 NIPO: 036-13-007-8