The work of Gino De Dominicis eludes classification within a particular movement, presenting a challenge in firmly associating him with any Neoavantgarde group. Controversial, mysterious, and elusive, constructing a comprehensive biographical and artistic profile of De Dominicis proves difficult. He deliberately limited public appearances and exhibitions, while actively discouraging the publication of catalogs that would compile his work.
De Dominicis had studied at the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Ancona, the city where he was born. His first exhibition was organized in 1967 in his father’s gallery and presented works with a figurative theme. The following year he moved to Rome and decided to join the Laboratorio ’70, an artistic group of protest – or goliardic provocation – formed by Gianfranco Notargiacomo, Paolo Matteucci and Marcello Grottesi. The following year he exhibited at L’Attico in Rome, a gallery which exhibited his works several times between the 1960s and 1970s.
De Dominicis artistic production can be divided in two different periods. Between the 1960s and the late 1970s, the artist was engaged in expressing himself through installations and sculptures, exhibiting mainly in Rome, in L’Attico but also at Palazzo Taverna, Galleria Pio Monti and Galleria Sperone. Since the beginning of the 1980s and until his death, he was mainly interested in a figurative painting, still exhibiting very often in Rome, but also elsewhere, such as at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples (1986), Galleria Mazzoli in Modena (1986), Galleria Lia Rumma in Naples (1988), the The Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation in New York (1989), at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble (1990), and at Galleria Stein and Galleria Toselli in Milan (1995).
The first phase, as it may be called, of De Dominicis includes reflections centered on the relationship between time and eternity: theories diffusely expressed in the Lettera sull’immortalità del corpo (1970) and represented in works such as Seconda soluzione d’immortalità (L’universo è immobile), exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1972, or Il tempo, lo sbaglio, lo spazio (1969). Also dating back to 1969 are the 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. Through these works De Dominicis invites to pursue the immortality of the body, despite the fact that it seems as unattainable as creating a square around a stone falling into water or flying by simply wiggling one’s arms. Invisible works from the late 1960s such as ll Cubo, Il Cilindro, La Piramide, perceptible only through the silhouettes of geometric figures drawn on the ground, are in the same vein of thought.
1969 was indeed a very prolific year for Gino De Dominicis. After seeing the Dodici Cavalli Vivi, exhibited by Jannis Kounellis at L’Attico Gallery, he proposed the following year to the same gallery a living zodiac, except for two dead fish. Pivoting on this same line of thinking is the Seconda soluzione d’Immortalità (L’Universo è Immobile), a work featuring a real human being, Mr. Paolo Rosa, a young man with Down Syndrome who sits in a corner while looking at three works that have already been exhibited separately on other occasions: Cubo invisibile, la Palla di gomma (caduta da due metri) nell’attimo immediatamente precedente il rimbalzo and the stone of Attesa di un casuale movimento molecolare generale in una sola direzione, tale da generare un movimento spontaneo della pietra.
From the late 1970s, as previously mentioned, De Dominicis devoted himself exclusively to painting. He used mainly tempera and pencil on paper, rather than oil or enamel on canvas. Painting is for the author figuration of the out-of-time blissful condition that humanity will reach in the future.
During his lifetime, De Dominicis was invited to several editions of the Venice Biennale. In 1982 he refused to participate in the Kassel Documenta, and in 1985 he won the international prize of the Paris Biennale. In the early 1990s, on the occasion of an anthological exhibition at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble, he exhibited for the first time Calamita cosmica (1990): a giant human skeleton twenty-four meters long, nine meters wide and nearly four meters high lying on the ground. An anatomically accurate work except for the long nose, a recurring element in many works. De Dominicis died of a heart attack in 1998. That same year the Archive dedicated to him was formally established, and it organized the following year the first retrospective exhibition on the artist at the Venice Biennale.
In 2004, the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Foligno acquired Calamita cosmica from the artist’s heirs, recovered from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. In 2010, the masterpiece was placed in the spaces of the former SS. Trinità Church in Annunziata di Foligno (PG), part of the Italian Contemporary Art Center, where it still stands today.