Ivan Tovar He was a great representative of the current of international surrealism.
He is described as one of the greatest representatives, heir by his own merits to those aesthetic, poetic principles that have given rise to one of the greatest and revolutionary movements that have the XNUMXth century as their historical space.
He made his first studies in painting at the National School of Fine Arts from which he graduated in 1959, promotion that was the beginning of his professional preparation.
At that time he presented his first pictorial exhibition in Santo Domingo, causing a notable impact among public lovers of the painting, collectors and art critics.
The critics of the time understood that the strength of a young brush with a vocation for permanence and transcendence had appeared, and so it was that his neo-surrealist inclination barely began to define itself.
In 1963 he came to Paris to study painting thanks to the efforts of his family, a city in which he was quickly inserted into the circles of painters of that current and in which he remained for 20 years.
When Iván arrived in the French capital in 1963, his work was focused and defined, designed according to his own formal criteria. At only 21 years of age, this artist had the opportunity to communicate and exchange with the group of Spanish republican artists who lived in Santo Domingo, among them Fernandez Granell, and inherited the circumstances of history that made it possible for trans-avant-garde thought to settle in the National School of Fine Arts.
Everything indicated that from his early youth he exchanged questions, occurrences and ideas, with many intellectuals and artists who made of the image the echo that allows to go beyond the word.
Paris in those years he enjoyed the presence of significant representatives of Latin American thought and art, Diego Rivera, Wilfredo Lam, among other important artists, they lived those moments of the Movement, and approached it, understanding that the intellectual conceptualization of surrealism did not seduce them more than all the projection that their respective cultures offered them through legends and myths, syncretism and religiosity that at all times raised a dimension to the imaginary superimposed on reality and above it.
His first award as an artist came with second place in the category Drawing of the IV Eduardo León Jimenes Art Contest 1968, and thus began its international projection.
The visual and social contextualization of his culture of origin allowed him to organically reach and dialogue with a surrealism placed within the reach of life itself, for this he neither saw nor felt the need for affiliation with the Breton group.
Later he settled in Santiago de compost it, where he continued painting and perfecting his style.
His drawings evolved over the years, obtaining a depth executed with caution and the delicacy of a direct and subtle line that is the body and architecture of a possible sculpture.
In front of a fine and safe line, a connection with the set of strokes is felt, the search for a volume, as if the artist were not satisfied with the flat plane.
Tovar's graphic works lead us to think that we are dealing with graphic studies for a sculptural work. This effect is confirmed when the drawing invites painting, because Tovar's work is above all drawing and the color comes to give volume and emotion to the form.
In his drawings, Tovar contains in his drawings that sensuality volume and roundness, because sometimes and taking the almost meditative time to look at his works, some of them come out through the gaze of the canvas to become the subject of a dreamlike statuary. Then, those organic mechanical, mineral and anatomical ones, unleash in the seer a whole free allegory.
Tovar, the main exponent of neosurrealism, which defines the movement of reappearance of the surrealist movement, is the most sought-after Dominican painter internationally, although he remains unknown to young people today, despite his strength and permeability in art. remains undeniable and palpable.
In neosurrealism, his art represents dreams and fantasies or visions of the unconscious mind, and throughout his life, Iván wanted it that way through painting, photography, and digital and graphic art.
In the "Tovarian" world it is not a matter of knowing or confirming or demonstrating whether the artist is a surrealist or a neo-surrealist, the essential thing is that we are dealing with a work that attracts and crosses emotions and intellectual understanding, since it captures an idea in him and a own visual intelligence.
He died on April 12, 2020 at the age of 78 in Santo Domingo Dominican Republic.