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U.Porto Memory

University of Porto Famous Alumni

José Dominguez Alvarez

José Dominguez Alvarez 1906-1942 Painter

With Galician ancestry, José Cândido Dominguez Alvarez was born in the Porto parish of Campanhã, on 23 February 1906.

His secondary education studies were done in Porto and in Pontevedra.

In 1919, he moved to Galicia to attend a course aiming to become a clerk at the Post Office, but he returned to Porto in 1920, and never attended the said course. In that same year, he was admitted to the Colégio Almeida Garrett and then, following his father's wishes, he worked in a fabrics warehouse.

During the 20's, he collaborated in the magazine Revista Contemporânea. In 1924, he produced his first drawings and water colours, and in 1926, at the age of 20, he enrolled in the preparatory course in Architecture at the Porto School of Fine Arts, and in 1928 changed to the Painting course.

He was a founding member of the group "+ Além", which in 1929 gathered many artists in Porto who opposed the posthumous tributes paid to master Marques de Oliveira. In that period, he became one of the subscribing members of the manifest entitled "Em Defesa da Arte" [In the Defence of Art].

Due to health reasons, he failed his school year in 1931, and spent part of the following year in Galicia painting.
In 1934, he produced some of his most acclaimed works, such as Homem da Cartola [Man in Top Hat], Louco [Mad Man], Casario [Houses], Homem Compostelano [Man from Compostela] and Figura dum Sonho [A Dream].
During this creative period, he collaborated in several cultural publications, and published, on a regular basis, works in the Porto periodical Jornal de Notícias.

His sole individual exhibition took place in the Silva Porto Salon, in June 1936. Nonetheless, he took part in many collective exhibitions. For example, the exhibitions of students from ESBAP (in the Silva Porto Salon, in 1929, and in 1931, at the Ateneu Comercial do Porto), he exhibited his work together with Artur Justino, from the group "+ Além", in the Silva Porto Salon, in 1930, he participated in the Grande Exposição dos Artistas Portugueses, [an exhibition of Portuguese artists] in 1935, in the 5th Modern Art Exhibition organized by the Secretariat for National Propaganda, in 1939, and in the Exposição Etnográfica do Douro Litoral [Ethnographical Exhibition of Coastal Douro] in the former Crystal Palace in Porto, in 1940. He also took part in the Aesthetic Celebration Missions in Viana do Castelo.

His painting course was completed while he was involved in all these creative activities, in 1940, when he presented his work "Paisagem com Animais" [Landscape with Animals], achieving full marks with this work. In the meantime, in the course of his degree he received some awards and praises from various teachers, for instance Aarão de Lacerda and Dórdio Gomes.

Between 1940 and 1942 he was a scholarship student of the Institute for High Culture. This period of work was marked essentially by landscapes, and he was appointed teacher at the Infante D. Henrique Industrial School, in Porto.

His frail health betrayed him on 16 April 1942, when he died of tuberculosis.

His works of art were exhibited posthumously in many exhibitions. In 1943, the Institute for High Culture, through painters Dórdio Gomes and Guilherme Camarinha, organized a retrospective exhibition at the Silva Porto Salon, which was to be repeated in Lisbon in 1943, at the National Society for Fine Arts. Other exhibitions included: an exhibition at the Ateneu Comercial do Porto, organized by Fernando Lanhas, Alberto de Serpa and João Menéres Campos, in 1951; an exhibition at the Dominguez Alvarez Academy (a gallery inaugurated in 1954, in Porto, by Jaime Isidoro and António Sampaio), in 1958; an exhibition entitled Dominguez Alvarez na Colecção de Adolfo Casais Monteiro, held at the Gravura Gallery, in Lisbon, in 1963; a retrospective exhibition of Alvarez held at Casa de Serralves, in Porto, and later at the Secretariat of State for Culture, in Lisbon (1987); a tribute at the Bienal Internacional de Cerveira, in 1997; an exhibition in memory of the artist, at the Vilar Gallery, organized by Cooperativa Árvore, in the summer of 2002; and an exhibition entitled "Dominguez Alvarez 770, Rua da Vigorosa, Porto", held at the Modern Art Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in 2006, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the artist.

Despite his short career, developed at the same time as his academic activity, and interrupted by several trips to Spain and periods of illness, Dominguez Alvarez produced hundreds of works.

Unlike many of his colleagues, he didn't study abroad. He painted Porto and the towns of his ancestors, which inspired his work. A "painter from Pontevedra, living in Porto", as he used to describe himself, he was also a scholar, specialized in Spanish painting (Zuloaga, Dario de Regoios and Gutierrez Solana), a true promoter of artistic relations between Portugal and Galicia (promoting the exchange of books and magazines among writers and artists from both countries). He even attempted to organize, in Porto, in the autumn of 1935, an exhibition of Galician art as part of the "Galician Culture Week", a project which, nevertheless, never saw the light of day.

A designer of rural and urban landscapes based on natural features, visited by the artist during the trips he took in the Iberian Peninsula (Porto, Minho, Galicia and Castile), he depicted day-to-day scenes with black and twisted men figures, figures standing in the rain, figures against the backdrop of landscapes and of towers of Spanish cathedrals, for example the cathedrals of Segovia and Compostela, using an expressionist and surrealist language that reveals a good mastery of materials and plastic solutions.

The work of this representative of the "second Portuguese modernism" is exhibited at the Modern Art Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in a total of 39 works (paintings and drawings), in Lisbon, at the National Museum Soares dos Reis, in Porto, at the Casa-Museu de José Régio, in Vila do Conde, at the Municipal Museum Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, in Amarante, and at the Abade de Baçal Museum, in Bragança.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2010)