They are female presences that have lost all their individual features, becoming pure archetypes. 

“Despite his tender age, De Dominicis has confirmed himself to be an artist of the previous generation but without being susceptible to old age and tiredness.”¹ In 1982, a critic writing for Segno magazine began his review of Gino De Dominicis’s latest solo exhibition at the Galleria Sperone in Rome with these words. The image of him that had already been accepted - conceptual in the 1970s, painter in the 1980s - possessed stylised traits, but ones that were ultimately useful for summing up his career of more than ten years. Unlike many of his peers, the passage between two such different phases of his career flowed smoothly (his studies at the Istituto d’Arte in Ancona and then at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome ensured his excellent command of the subject) and stood out for the continuity of his reference points. It was not just a question of consistency: his ongoing focuses - doubles, time, divine beings - were a good match for a period of retrospection, inclined towards literary atmospheres. 

The artist’s transition from installations and object-based works to figurative art took place in around 1977-80 through the photographic medium. Created during this period, Urvashi and Gilgamesh (fig. 1) marked the turning point: it was the piece that marked the start of De Dominicis’s new creative identity. This photograph is worked with ink and graphite. Flat like shooting targets, the profiles of the king of Uruk and the Indian goddess known for her eternal beauty overlook an exotic landscape. The hermetic symbolism is boosted by the pyramid, as by the flying disc added in pencil. The series of replicas and variants made over the years attests to the success of a subject that appears here for the first time. The hermetic universe, saturated with implications lost in the myths and history of remote civilisations would remain a constant feature, while the artist would later seem to look to Art Deco stylistic features, the second wave of Futurism and the sculptures of Fausto Melotti. 

His mature years primarily stand out for his practice of drawing on unprimed poplar panels. “De Dominicis’s art surprisingly reveals a hand born for drawing”,² noted Laura Cherubini in 1990 when she introduced the artist in the XLIV Venice Biennale catalogue. His astounding ability combined with his capacity for abstraction is truly striking. His figures seem to be the guardians of unknowable secrets. They are female presences that have lost all their individual features, becoming pure archetypes. Applied to worn yet elegant faces, the artist’s ideal speaks of a distant beauty, of fleeting features packed with inner resonance. Despite being highly personal in terms of their inventiveness and technical rendering, the references to the history of art are evident: the gigantism compared to the surface evokes the neoclassical Picasso, the hazy Leonardo, the ambiguous and bony faces of Fernand Khnopff. The Cerruti work is lacking in an exhibition and bibliographical history, and yet it represents an important example of the era. Created in 1992 - as indicated by the date on the back just below the white chalk signature - it belongs to the series freely inspired by the Mona Lisa. Although De Dominicis’s known impatience for documenting his research makes all chronological clarifications very difficult, we can recognise that it started in 1987, to be precise in the panel exhibited three years later at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain Le Magasin in Grenoble and then at the XLIV Venice Biennale (fig. 2). In the large example discussed here, a mysterious face shown at a threequarter angle with half-closed eyes and the hint of a smile is surrounded by a hairstyle shown from the front. The chiaroscuro created by the dense pencil and charcoal hatching becomes more intense around the chin, while in the untouched parts we can see the veins of the wood, which fulfils an expressive role. The changes around the neck add freshness to the image. Unlike the other works featuring a similar iconography, here the hairstyle takes on an architectural appearance. The lock on the right side is twisted, supported by the wedge beneath and the parallelepiped filled with white tempera. Formerly in a private collection, the painting then found its way to the Roman gallery of Erica Ravenna Fiorentini. From there it passed into the Cerruti Collection on an unknown date. 

Fabio Belloni

¹ Tosi 1982, p. 30.

² L. Cherubini, “Le divergenze dell’arte”, in Venice 1990, p. 23.