The Ministry of Culture awards master Ramon Oviedo with the National Award of the Visual Arts 2013

The Ministry of Culture awards master Ramon Oviedo with the National Award of the Visual Arts 2013
Santo Domingo, June 6, 2014

The artist was chosen for his “permanent commitment to the Dominican visual creation, having created many great national pieces of visual art”

The Ministry of Culture (MINC) announced and signed the act unanimously declaring master of brush Ramon Oviedo as the winner of the National Price of Visual Arts, of the year 2013, with a cash prize of 500 thousand pesos.

Minister of Culture Jose Antonia Rodriguez, as president of the jury, informed that the departed masters Guillo Perez and Soucy de Pellerano also received the National Price of Visual Arts 2013, in late honor of their trajectory and significant support of the arts.

The act, executed in the Sala del Despacho Ministerial (Room of the Ministerial Office), was headed by Rodriguez, who informed that Oviedo will receive the prize in his home, among his family, due to health conditions.

Once Oviedo was selected, the jury team considered that this event deals with artists with a high permanent compromise towards the Dominican visual creation, especially since he created many national pieces of art.

It also considered the production of his paintings constitutes a collection of images that document the strenuous, dilated and fruitful persistence of an artistic personally of exquisite poetic sensibility.

In their recommendations, the jury also emphasizes that the global work of art of Oviedo is characterized by the intense reflection of the human condition, the existential contradictions and also the complex relations between art, sociocultural space and nature.

During the announcement, Rodriguez was accompanied by Carlos Santos, Vice minister of Institutional Development; Marianne de Tolentino, director of the National Gallery of Bellas Artes; Maria Elena Ditren, director of the Museum of Modern Arts, and lawyer Carlos Reyes of the Legal Department of the MINC.

The jury also hosted Myrna Guerrero, director of the Museum Bellapart; Carlos Acero, president of the Dominican Association of Art Critics (ADCA). Another team included in the jury was Clinton Samuel Lopez Torres, Presient of the Dominican School of Visual Arts, and Mildred Canahuate, President of the Association of Art Galeries of the Dominican Republic.

Bibliography notes

Ramon Oviedo was born in the community of Santa Cruz de Barahona in the year 1924. He has been awarded various times for various prizes as well as recognized nationally and internationally.

He is self-taught and studied printmaking and cartography in Panama. Once he returned to the country, he worked as a public illustrator for the most important agencies in the country at the time.

He opened the door to the graphic arts and emerged as a painter at the beginning of the 1960s. In 1964 he began to exhibit his paintings in collective showings. In 1966 he made his first individual showing. In 1965 he became a member of the Cultural Front and in 1968 of the Proyecta group. In 1972 he participated in the New Collective Image, realized by Santiago de los Caballeros.

Among the acknowledgements that Oviedo has received, the Orden al Merito de Duarte, Sanchez y Mella stands out, signed by the Dominican government in the year 1997. Another important one is the Condecoración Chevalier de la Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, which is presented by the Ministry of Culture and Communication in France.

In 2013 the individual exposition titles “Tribute to the Master Ramon Oviedo” was organized in his honor, showing paintings selected by the collection of Fernandez Baez Guerrero.