Photos: Carlos A. Schwartz – Efraín Pintos

Monumento al Gato (Monument to the Cat)

“The Viscount of Noailles donated the plans for the “Monument to the Cat”, a unique piece by Óscar Domínguez, erected on his property in Hyères and reproduced in this exhibition. The Noailles family also contributed with “El Pirata” (“The Pirate”), a large iron drawing integrated with canvas and ropes, to be placed in a large space. In these two works we can appreciate the great inventions of this artist, his fidelity to Surrealism, the application of various techniques, his constant humour and originality. The “Monument to the Cat” is a masonry work, with glass in the eyes and an iron sheaf in the interpretation of the moustache. The sense of play remains a constant in these works.”

Westerdahl, E. (1973). La 1ª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en la calle, en Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme, ISSN 1133-8857, Nº. 99. Número dedicado a los parques naturales, 47-50.

“As a portico, by age, of the Canarian lot, the Monumento al gato (Monument to the cat) stands in the García Sanabria Park, reconstructed after the one erected in Paris by the great interpreter of Surrealism in the Canary Islands, Óscar Domínguez (born in La Laguna in 1906, who committed suicide in Paris on the last day of 1957), as one of his imaginative witticisms full of sparkling defiance.”

Hernández Perera, J. (1996). Dos décadas de Esculturas en la Calle. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 25-54). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6

“The works by Óscar Domínguez, Pirata (The Pirate) and Monumento al Gato (Monument to the Cat) (1952-53) are situated between the playful montage and the surreal distorting imagination of his period in Hyères.”

Pérez Reyes, C. (1996). Reflexión sobre lo visto y lo vivido. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 65-76). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6

“Like Miró’s, Domínguez’s sculpture Monument to the Cat is also a poetic object. In this case, however, the magic is transferred to the walkable space. It is, it has been said, “an amusement fit for a park”. So it is, provided that we see in surrealist humour not a pure game but a response to the enigmas and paradoxes of our experience of the real. Because it stalks us from masonry and iron: it looks at us from the unknown and speaks to us of our fears. Emeterio Gutiérrez Albelo, Domínguez’s fellow adventurer, expresses this better than me when he wrote in his poem “Los frutos lejanos” (The distant fruits) in 1934:

Kill that cat. Kill it.
That monstrous cat that stalks you
with its two headlights
-fixed, fixed, fixed-
in the deepest corner of your room.
Kill it.
The rumbling piano is still waiting for you.
Dragged, dragged by that mannequin in a neo-romantic faint.
A very long, very long, lizard tail.
Gawking
And lunatic.
A tail mocked in that sudden explosion of geraniums.
Meekly gathered in front of a shoe
– astrological, vagabond –
that in its own cords of misery hung itself from a lamppost from the scaffold.”

Sánchez Robayna, A. (1996). El espacio de la escultura. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 77-86). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6

“A different thing is Óscar Domínguez’s Monument to the Cat, the most demystifying of all, which is ahead of Claes Oldenburg’s acid criticism of the classical monument. It is in fact a reproduction of the original in the park of the Château de Hyères, owned by the Viscount of Noailles. It can be interpreted as one of those whimsical “follies” that sometimes stood in private gardens and, as such, appropriate to the context of the park in which it is located.”

Fernández Lomana, M.A. (1996). De la conmemoración al homenaje. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 87-108). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6