Gilberto Hernández Ortega was mentored by the skilled Celeste Woss y Gil in painting, and he became one of the first enrolled in the National School of Fine Arts after its establishment in 1942. A student of Josep Gausachs and a multigenerational teacher of Dominican artists, Ortega creates an interpretation of the Caribbean habitat, establishing a symbiosis that expresses the unreal essence of its forest and customs through loose strokes and bold brushwork. In Marchanta (1976), he recreates a theme that has been present in Dominican painting since its incorporation by Yoryi Morel in the 1930s, blending flowers and fruits over the head of a dark-skinned woman with a long neck and a face featuring a ghostly eye through an all-white socket. The painter emphasises the white dress through a background of dark patinas, with glimpses of some houses painted with just a few strokes of light that guide the viewer’s gaze across the entire canvas. The tracing, pigment application, and magical aura emanating from this composition make it one of Ortega’s masterpieces.
This is the first time the work of Gilberto Hernández Ortega is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Myrna Guerrero Villalona
