Jaime Colson

Jaime Antonio Gumercindo Gonzalez Colson was a Dominican modernist painter, writer and playwright born in Tubagua, Puerto Plata, in 1901 and remembered as one of the most important Dominican artists of the twentieth century. His travels to Spain and France led him to experiment with Cubism and Surrealism, and in Paris he came to know Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque; after moving to Mexico in 1934 he taught art and befriended Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, and later became professor and eventually director of the School of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo. He developed a style he called Neohumanismo, blending Caribbean and Afro-Cuban influences with Cubism and Surrealism, and died in Santo Domingo in 1975.