- Domingo Vega de la Rosa
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Domingo Vega de la Rosa (Tenerife, 1953) is a painter from the Canarian Islands, Spain. Actually he lives and works in Los Realejos.
Contents
Biography
Early life
Domingo Vega de la Rosa is born in Puerto de la Cruz, a town at the north coast of Tenerife. At the age of about thirteen, he got interested in painting because of an old encyclopaedia with black and white art reproductions. Later, he went to the library, to read books about modern art. His first exhibition was in 1977 in Palma de Mallorca.
He is an autodidact. After a study in tourism, he moved to Barcelona in 1974 and made a journey to Holland, by train and bus. He stayed in Haarlem, (where he visited the Frans Hals Museum), and in Amsterdam. Travelling was a kind of inauguration; he was seeking his identity by travelling in a world so different from life on the Canarian Islands. In musea he was trying to learn more about art. He felt a vocation as an artist, but he experienced little stimulation from his surroundings.
The 70's
In 1975 he had to come back to Tenerife for military service. This was the year Francisco Franco died. This event was very important for his personal development and also for life in the Canarian Islands. In his spare time he followed a course about technical drawing and read a lot of books about different types of art. He felt a special attraction to surrealism. Salvador Dali and the Canarian painter Óscar Domínguez were his examples. After his seniority, he decided to concentrate on painting seriously. He moved to Madrid, where he achieved to sell his first works. In 1977 he got an opportunity to exhibit some of his drawings in a bookshop in Palma de Mallorca, after having been painting all summer in Manacor. Afterwards he returned to Tenerife.
In the seventies, the only university of the Canary Islands was in La Laguna, Tenerife. This was also the period of the new democracy in Spain. A very important period, where culture and politics were very important and La Laguna was a meeting point which facilitated contacts. In 1978 Vega has his first solo exhibition of paintings in La Laguna. Through this exhibition he became known at the Canarian Islands and from this time on, he was able to make a living as a painter.
Later development
In 1984 he moved to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to study the original paintings of Néstor Martín Fernández de la Torre. He participated at the exhibition “The nudes in Canarian painting” in Néstors own museum. In 1985 he went to Madrid to become a student at the workshops about actual art of Guillermo Pérez Vilalta. From 1993 to 1999, he travelled many times to New York to experience the artistic environment of this city.
Alongside his artistic activities, he went to study history in 1997, at the UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educaciόn a Distancia). He obtained his degree in January 2003. In 2005 he graduated his specialty of Art History with the research about Figurative art in the Latin-Mediterranean countries.
Ever since 2007, he started to write articles about art in a few weekly’s of Tenerifes newspapers. He also gave a series of lectures about the Actual art and the world of art (2008) and a series about Art and movies (2009) at the Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos de Canarias(IEHC) in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife. In 2011 the Council of Culture of the government of the Canary Islands organized an exhibition of the paintings of Domingo Vega de la Rosa in La Laguna, which he called Anthropoflora Vernacula. This exhibition meant a first official recognition of his work.
Selection of Exhibitions
- 1978 First individual exhibition of paintings, cultural center Ateneo, La Laguna, Tenerife
- 1985 Individual exhibition of touring artists in Caja Postal. Madrid, San Lorenzo del Escorial, Huelva and Jerez
- 1997 Participation in Five Artists, Maximillian Café, New York
- 2001 Individual exhibition De la Apariencia al la Forma, Sala Barquillo, Caja Madrid, Madrid
- 2003 Individual exhibition Transfiguraciones, Estudio Artizar, La Laguna, Tenerife
- 2011 Individual exhibition Antropoflora Vernácula, Instituto de Canarias Cabrera Pinto in La Laguna, Tenerife
References
- [1]
- [2]
- [3]
- Pinto, C.E., Allen, J.(2011) Domingo Vega Antropoflora vernácula. Gobierno de Canarias: Islas Canarias.
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