Gino de Dominicis  (Italian, 1947-1998) 

Gino De Dominicis (Italian, 1947–1998) is perhaps a lesser known eccentric artist recognized for his obscurity and mystery. Little is known about the artist’s life because he avoided the press and contact with the art world, and he rarely allowed his work to be photographed for reproductions. Born in Ancona, Italy, he studied at a state art institute and took architecture courses at the Fine Arts Academy in Rome. Under the influence of Edgardo Mannucci (Italian, 1904–1986), De Dominicis developed his own artistic style, working in various media including sculpture, painting, film, and installation. The artist also took inspiration from both the Arte Povera and Transavanguardia movements. Though he hated the word “Conceptual,” his early works from the late 1960s and early 1970s are widely described as Conceptual or neo-Conceptual; De Dominicis, however, preferred the term Modern Romanticism. An example of these early works is the sculpture entitled Mozzarella in Carrozza (1970), which is a image of the Italian dish “cheese in a carriage.”

At his first solo exhibition in 1969, De Dominicis included an obituary poster announcing, and also predicting, his own death. He was known to fabricate facts about himself to keep an air of mystery to his name, and, when he died in 1998, people who knew him thought it was another wild rumor he had invented. Throughout his career, De Dominicis was extremely interested in immortality. He created Figurative and pictorial images based on Sumerian myths, as seen in his work entitled Urvasi and Ghilgamesh (1988). He reached immortality through his art; as he once said “To truly exist, things would have to exist eternally, immortally.”

His work also displays ideas of mortality, as seen in his sculptures of skeletons, including the colossal 28-meter work Calamita Cosmica, which he had left behind before his death. De Dominicis is also known for his controversial works, the most notorious being Second Resolution of Immortality (The Universe is Still) (1972). This work was forced to close after only a few hours on display at the opening of the Venice Biennale. He participated in several other Biennales in Paris (1971 and 1973) and Venice (1980, 1990, 1995, and 1997). In later years, De Dominicis drew sketches of figures with elongated and surreal features. In the final years of his career, he took up portraiture. De Dominicis died in 1998.