The work of Gino De Dominicis (Ancona, 1947 – Rome, 1998) eludes classification within any specific movement, making it difficult to firmly associate him with the Neo-avant-garde. Controversial, mysterious, and elusive, constructing a comprehensive biographical and artistic profile of De Dominicis remains a challenge. He deliberately limited public appearances and exhibitions, actively discouraging the publication of catalogues that would compile his work.
De Dominicis studied at the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Ancona, the city where he was born. His first exhibition was held in 1967 at his father’s gallery and featured works with a figurative theme. The following year, he moved to Rome and joined Laboratorio ’70, an artistic collective rooted in protest or goliardic provocation, formed by Gianfranco Notargiacomo, Paolo Matteucci, and Marcello Grottesi. In 1969, he exhibited at L’Attico in Rome, a gallery that would continue to showcase his work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
De Dominicis’s artistic output can be divided into two distinct phases. From the 1960s to the late 1970s, he focused on installations and sculptures, exhibiting primarily in Rome at L’Attico, but also at Palazzo Taverna, Galleria Pio Monti, and Galleria Sperone. Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing until his death, he turned primarily to figurative painting, exhibiting frequently in Rome and in other cities, including the Capodimonte Museum in Naples (1986), Galleria Mazzoli in Modena (1986), Galleria Lia Rumma in Naples (1988), The Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation in New York (1989), the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble (1990), and Galleria Stein and Galleria Toselli in Milan (1995).
The first phase of De Dominicis’s career is marked by reflections on the relationship between time and eternity—concepts articulated in his 1970 Lettera sull’immortalità del corpo and visualized in works such as Seconda soluzione d’immortalità (L’universo è immobile), exhibited at the 1972 Venice Biennale, and Il tempo, lo sbaglio, lo spazio (1969). Also from 1969 are two films: Quadrati cerchi (Tentativo di far formare dei quadrati invece che dei cerchi attorno ad un sasso che cade nell’acqua) and Tentativo di volo. In these works, De Dominicis explores the pursuit of bodily immortality, even as it appears as impossible as forming squares in water around a falling stone or flying by flapping one’s arms. Similarly, his “invisible works” from the late 1960s—Il Cubo, Il Cilindro, La Piramide—which are perceptible only through the geometric silhouettes drawn on the ground, reflect this conceptual investigation.
Indeed, 1969 was a particularly prolific year for De Dominicis. A year after seeing Jannis Kounellis’s Dodici Cavalli Vivi at L’Attico, he proposed a living zodiac (with the exception of two dead fish) to the same gallery. Along the same conceptual lines is Seconda soluzione d’immortalità (L’universo è immobile), which features a real person—Mr. Paolo Rosa, a young man with Down syndrome—seated in a corner and gazing at three previously exhibited works: Cubo invisibile, Palla di gomma (caduta da due metri) nell’attimo immediatamente precedente il rimbalzo, and the stone from Attesa di un casuale movimento molecolare generale in una sola direzione, tale da generare un movimento spontaneo della pietra.
From the late 1970s onward, De Dominicis devoted himself exclusively to painting. He mainly used tempera and pencil on paper, rather than oil or enamel on canvas. For the artist, painting represented a a timeless and blissful state that humanity might achieve in the future.
Throughout his life, De Dominicis was invited to participate in several editions of the Venice Biennale. He declined to take part in Documenta in Kassel in 1982 and was awarded the international prize at the Paris Biennale in 1985. In the early 1990s, during a retrospective at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble, he presented for the first time Calamita cosmica (1990): a monumental human skeleton, twenty-four meters long, nine meters wide, and nearly four meters high, lying on the ground. The sculpture is anatomically accurate—except for its long nose, a recurring element in many of his works.
De Dominicis died of a heart attack in 1998. That same year, his Archive was established, and in 1999 it organized his first retrospective at the Venice Biennale.
In 2004, the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Foligno acquired Calamita cosmica from the artist’s heirs, recovering it from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. In 2010, the masterpiece was installed in the former Church of SS. Trinità in Annunziata di Foligno (PG), now part of the Italian Center for Contemporary Art, where it remains on view to this day.
