The Local Committee of Nueva Canarias in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, chaired by Odalys Padrón, has supported the special program to be held in Santa Cruz in 2023 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Sculptures on the Street exhibition and requests that Óscar Domínguez is the relevant figure of the same.
The secretary of the Environment area of the Local Committee of Nueva Canarias, Rafael González, pointed out that the figure of Oscar Domínguez, considered along with Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí as the third great name that Spain gave to surrealist painting, held four exhibitions in the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Santa Cruz, carried the name of Tenerife around the world and, in his work, included aspects typical of the Canary Islands, such as volcanic terrain or the dragon tree. “That is why it is incomprehensible that his contribution is not recognized in the capital and that his name still does not appear on a main street or avenue,” he added.
For her part, Odalys Padrón considers it unacceptable that those responsible for a cultural policy “that has only promoted oblivion and abandonment now seek to turn the Viera y Clavijo Park into a rodin museum franchisewith some exorbitant forecasts and an unreal and fanciful study that can only be understood from the ‘Cultura del Pelotazo’”.
“The Viera y Clavijo Cultural Park does not deserve so many years of abandonment, the absolute degradation of a space that is a cultural legacy in itself, ideal for a public museum, everyone’s heritage. A space to magnify and transmit our knowledge, customs, ideas and traditions: culture”, added Padrón.
In the opinion of NC, “the Viera y Clavijo Cultural Park, once the feasibility studies have been carried out, could be the headquarters of the works of Óscar Domínguez, which are currently in the Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (TEA), and with the that Santa Cruz owes an enormous cultural debt as he is a world-class painter from Tenerife, a friend of Picasso and André Breton who, at the beginning of the last century, placed our city among the vanguards of cultural movements through his exhibitions in the Círculo de Fine Arts and with its publications in La Gaceta del Arte”.
Rafael González states that while Santa Cruz “resists removing dozens of vestiges that violate the Democratic Memory Law and its mayor talks about the tourist attractions of the monument dedicated to Franco, the surrealist painter Óscar Domínguez does not have a bust in a square in Santa Cruz, so we cannot afford to go down in history from having been the international intellectual vanguard to being, at present, one of the last refuges from the darkest period in Spain”, he added.
“For these reasons and because there is no basis to justify Rodin’s relationship with any artistic or cultural movement, with our city or with the island, the mayor’s proposal has generated enormous controversy and rejection from the cultural and popular world,” from New The Canary Islands consider that it should be reconsidered as a multifunctional space that houses, among others, the Óscar Domínguez Museum “in homage to the promoters of cultural movements in our city and to people with exciting and sensitive cultural projects that have favored Santa Cruz.”
