Excerpt of An Interview with Vicente Dopico-Lerner

Excerpt of An Interview with Vicente Dopico-Lerner (Read the full interview at artdistricts.com):

Vicente Dopico-Lerner is a multidisciplinary artist with a long-standing career and a solid body of work in which abstract expressionism, surrealism and neofiguration go hand in hand. In this interview he tells us about his life, his work, his upcoming projects and he describes the initial years of the Miami art movement.
Interview by Raisa Clavijo
Artist Vicente Dopico-Lerner

Raisa Clavijo – You arrived in the United States at the beginning of the 1960s and were one of the first artists to graduate from Miami Dade College. Tell me about those years. What opportunities did artists have back then?
Vicente Dopico-Lerner – I arrived in the United States in 1964 and started studying art in 1967 at MDC, which at that time was called Miami Dade Junior College. It was the only college where you could study the first two years of any career. There was also the University of Miami, which was cost prohibitive. At the time, I considered the art department at MDC to be better than its counterpart at UM. It was made up of great professors, including the sculptor Duane Hanson, who later on became one of the most prominent figures in the American hyperrealist movement.
For the first time fiberglass was being used as material for sculpture. It was a time when hyperrealism, abstract expressionism and many other tendencies converged, and these nourished us young artists in a Miami devoid of the winds of change that blew in the world of art and in society in general. These were the times of the counterculture, the hippie movement and the beginning of the Vietnam war. The Miami Cuban community was still in its infancy. Miami was not even half of what it is today. As there were very few galleries and very few buyers, we had to find a way to put food on the table somehow and paint in our spare time. Exhibition spaces were scarce, and Miami Dade College was an indispensable meeting place.
R.C. – In your oeuvre abstract expressionism, neofiguration and surrealism go hand in hand. What influences do you recognize as being essential in your work?
V.D.L. – I like the fact that all of these tendencies appear in my work; I don’t want to feel pigeonholed. We painters are tied to visual memory-we are constantly subjected to different influences. In today’s culture we are constantly bombarded by images that we invariably draw from. At the beginning of my career, German expressionism, the oeuvre of Munch and Kirchner influenced me strongly. However, I also recall that at a very young age I copied Picasso’s Blue Nude. Initially we are always influenced by the great masters, but then we discover our own language in which we may incorporate different artistic tendencies. My work is obviously influenced by the tormented images of Bacon, (I visited his show at the Guggenheim several times in the 1970s), and also by the work of Roberto Matta from the 1980s.
R.C. – Tell me about the different stages you have undergone as an artist. How did you evolve to the work you do today?
V.D.L. – We find our way through practice and experience. We go through different stages, and I would say that I’m still going through them. I believe that I am once again at a point of self-discovery and development. We artists are influenced by the experiences that mark our lives and consciously or unconsciously we reproduce them in our work. Therefore, I suppose, in some way the work of all creators is autobiographical. In order to arrive at the work I do today, I have lived in different places and countries. I have suffered victories and setbacks, and I have incorporated these into my work. My style has been born of that mixture of influences-always dreaming of a better and truer oeuvre.
R.C. – The disturbing figures that have appeared in your work over the last few decades have become a constant. What do these figures represent?
V.D.L. – I see them as beautiful and very real because they don’t hide behind masks; they are like the present day, at once disturbing but beautiful. This is a period in humanity when the values of morality and justice are bought. Look at what happened with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with the ecological disaster caused by BP? Nothing. Silence was purchased. What do you expect me to paint?
These constants, which appear involuntarily in my work, are directly related to what I live each day. In 2000 I had a show at the Museo de Arte Moderno in the Dominican Republic that I intentionally called, ‘Hacia el Fin del Milenio’ ['Toward the End of the Millenium'] I then presented that same exhibition in Havana in 2001, at the Convento de San Francisco de Asís, where I entitled it ‘Aguardando que escapen los demonios’ ['Waiting for the Demons to Escape']. All of those ‘horrific’ beings were there, attempting to exorcize our own demons. They reflect my own character; I am neither very optimistic nor happy.