Jaime Colson


Jaime Antonio Colson was a modernist painter from the Dominican Republic. He, along with Yoryi Morel and Darío Suro, is considered one of the founders of the modernist school of Dominican painting.

Early life, education and career

Jaime Antonio Gumercindo González Colson was born in Cubagua, a hamlet 15 km SE of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic on 13 January 1901, the son of Antonio González, a Spanish merchant, and Juana María Colson Tradwell, a Dominican woman of European American descent. His maternal uncle Jayme Henry Colson Tradwell was a Dominican writer. His maternal grandparents were Henry Colson and Mary Eliza Treadwell, Anglo-American immigrants from Boston.
Colson moved in 1918 to Spain where he studied art in Madrid and Barcelona. He lived in Paris from 1924 to 1934, where he was greatly influenced by Cubists. Primarily a figurative artist, Colson experimented with several different artistic styles, including Cubism, Surrealism, and Neoclassicism. His artistic friends included José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. After a short but intense stay in Cuba, Colson developed a close friendship with Cuban painter Mario Carreño Morales. He subsequently went back to Europe, where he remained for ten years. After living a decade in Europe, he returned to Santo Domingo in 1950 and continued to teach.
His works blend cubism, surrealism, symbolism, expressionism, neoclassicism.
He also wrote poetry and plays. He is one of the great painters of 20th-century Latin America.

Death and legacy

Colson died of pulmonary edema in Santo Domingo on 20 November 1975, aged 74; he suffered from throat cancer because of his assiduous smoking habit. He was married to Japanese painter and sculptor Toyo Yutaka Karimoto.
A retrospective of his work was held at Museo Bellapart in Santo Domingo in 2008.