Jaime Colson

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Fiesta de Guachupita. Jaime Colson . Memoria de la Pintura Dominicana

Jaime Antonio Colson (13 January 1901 – 20 November 1975) was a Dominican modernist painter, writer, and playwright. Greatly influenced by his European travels, his style could be described as Cubist and Surrealist. He, along with Yoryi Morel and Darío Suro, is considered one of the founders of the modernist school of Dominican painting.

Early life and career[]

Jaime Antonio Gumercindo González Colson^[a] was born in Cubagua, a hamlet 15 km SE of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic on 13 January 1901, the son of Antonio González, a Spanish merchant, and Juana María Colson Tradwell, a Dominican woman of European American descent. His maternal uncle (1863 – 1954) was a Dominican writer. His maternal grandparents were Henry Colson and Mary Eliza Treadwell, Anglo-American immigrants from Boston.^[2]

In 1918, Colson moved to Spain at 17 to study art. His earliest works were influenced by Noucentisme, the prevailing artistic and literary aesthetic in Barcelona at the time, as well as the era’s avant-garde movements.^[3] In 1920, he moved to Madrid, where he became acquainted with Salvador Dalí, Maruja Mallo, Fernando Briones, Joaquín Sorolla, and Ramon Maria del Valle. He lived in Paris from 1924 to 1934, where he discovered the works of Pablo Picasso and Giorgio De Chirico, which greatly influenced his paintings from the 30’s-40’s.^[3] During this time, Colson began experimenting with Cubist and Surrealist aesthetics, evoking a return to the classic, an irreality.

Poor and living in a small apartment with no electricity, Colson decided to move to Mexico in 1934, where he worked as a teacher to sustain himself, and began publishing his writings ^[3] His artistic friends included José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and Cuban painter Mario Carreño Morales, whom he met after a short but intense stay in Cuba.

In 1938, he returned to his native Dominican Republic. He was commissioned by Rafael Trujillo for a portrait: they met once in person, and because his depiction of the dictator was too realistic (presented him as the mulatto that he was), it was never finished.^[3] Unable to find work in Santo Domingo, Colson moved back to Barcelona and Paris, where he remained for ten years (1939–1949), creating the most religious works of his career thus far. After living a decade in Europe, he returned to Santo Domingo in 1950 where he worked as a teacher. During this period, he experimented with afro-cubist aesthetics.

His works blend cubism, surrealism, symbolism, expressionism, noucentisme, neoclassicism. He also wrote poetry and plays. He is one of the great painters of 20th-century Latin America.

Death and legacy[]

Colson died of pulmonary edema in Santo Domingo on 20 November 1975, aged 74; he suffered from throat cancer because of his assiduous smoking habit. He was married to Japanese painter and sculptor .^[3][4]

A retrospective of his work was held at Museo Bellapart in Santo Domingo in 2008.

See also[]

• List of Dominican painters

Notes[]

References[]

• Staff (undated). "Jaime Colson 1901–1975" (in Spanish). Museo Bellapart. Retrieved August 24, 2013.
• Poupeye, Veerle (1998). Caribbean Art. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-20306-4.
• "Jaime Colson | Torna and Prado Fine Art Collection". Pradoart.com. Archived from the original on August 28, 2013. Retrieved November 7, 2013.

External links[]

• Colson exhibition catalog (PDF format) Museo Bellapart

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