Celeste Agustina Woss y Gil (5 May 1891 – 1985) was a Dominican painter, educator, and

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

activist, remembered as one of the most influential Dominican artists from the 20th century. Born in

Santo Domingo Santo Domingo, formerly known as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic and the List of metropolitan areas in the Caribbean, largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population. the Distrito Na ...

and daughter to former president Alejandro Woss y Gil, she was 12 years old when her family left the country in exile after her father's second presidential term ended in 1903. She spent the rest of her early years living and studying art in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

, and

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

.Danilo de los Santos. Memoria de la Pintura Dominicana. (Colección Centenario Grupo León Jimenes) 8v: vol 2. Grupo León Jimenes. Santo Domingo, 2003. pg 58 Her style fuses

post-impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...

influences from

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

with a distinctly

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

flavor. She is known for her nudes of women and scenes of bustling marketplaces. In 1924, she put on a solo exhibition of her work, being the first woman to do so in the country. Woss y Gil is especially remembered as an influential educator who would go on to teach some of the most well known native artists of the 20th century. She opened an art school in Santo Domingo in 1924, and later a painting and drawing academy in 1931. In August 1942, Woss y Gil joined the newly established National School of Fine Arts as founding faculty along with artists Josep Gausachs, George Hausdorf, José Vela Zanetti, and Manolo Pascual, later becoming the director. Among her students were artists

Gilberto Hernández Ortega Gilberto Hernández Ortega (21 December 1923 – 23 October 1979) was an artist from the Dominican Republic. He is considered a leading painter of his generation. Early life and education He was born in Baní, Peravia Province, in 1923 but ...

and

Delia Weber Delia Mercedes Weber Pérez (known as Delia Weber; 23 October 1900 – 28 December 1982) was a Dominican teacher, artist, poet and film actress, as well as a feminist and supporter of women's suffrage. Through her writing and painting, she port ...

. Woss y Gil died in 1985, aged 94–95, in

Early life and education

Woss y Gil was born on May 5, 1891, in

to María Altagracia Ricart Pérez and two-time former president Alejandro Woss y Gil (1885-1887 and 1903). Alejandro Woss y Gil served briefly as president in 1903; because he was removed from office after only a few short months, the Woss y Gil family left for France in exile, living there until 1912 before moving to Cuba. Her initial art studies began under the guidance of

Abelardo Rodríguez Urdaneta Abelardo Rodríguez Urdaneta (June 24, 1870 – January 11, 1933) was a Dominican sculptor, photographer, painter and educator. A prolific artist, he was one of the first successful multidisciplinary artists of the modern art era in the Dominica ...

in Santo Domingo. Living in Cuba, Woss y Gil enrolled at the Painting Academy in

Santiago de Cuba Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana. The municipality extends over , and contains t ...

, under the instruction of José Joaquín Tejada. Here, she participated in her first exhibition. From 1920 to 1922 she lived in

and continue her studies, enrolling at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

and the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

, during which she studied with Ashcan realist artist

George Luks George Benjamin Luks (August 13, 1867 – October 29, 1933) was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic Ashcan School of American painting. After travelling and studying in Europe, Luks worked as a newspaper illustrator a ...

and impressionist

Frank DuMond Frank Vincent DuMond (August 20, 1865 – February 6, 1951) was one of the most influential teacher-painters in 20th-century America. He was an illustrator and American Impressionist painter of portraits and landscapes, and a prominent teach ...

.^Ibid. pg 59 Her work was first exhibited in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in 1923 in an Art Students League exhibition.

Artistic career

In 1924, Woss y Gil returned to

and opened a studio-school, teaching classes in the courtyard of her home.Danilo de los Santos. Memoria de la Pintura Dominicana. (Colección Centenario Grupo León Jimenes) 8v: vol 2. Grupo León Jimenes. Santo Domingo, 2003. pg 60 To inaugurate the school, she held a solo exhibition, being the first female artist in Dominican Republic to do so, which was well received by art critics throughout the country. Her school introduced the practice of drawing from live models in the country. Woss y Gill's post-impressionistic art style shows depictions of a wide range of subjects, most popularly female nudes, portraits, and scenes of Dominican pictorial life. Interested in human anatomy, Woss y Gil closed her home studio-school in 1928 to leave for New York to further her artistic training.^Ibid. pg 61 Upon her return to Santo Domingo in 1931, she establishes an Academy of Drawing and Painting, which would become the foremost art school in the country throughout the 1930s. Among the students she taught here were Gilberto Hernández Ortega, Delia Weber, Genoveva Báez, Xavier Amiama, and Purita Barón. Woss y Gil taught at her academy for the next 10 years until in 1942, when she joined the founding faculty of the newly formed National School of Fine Arts (“Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes”), eventually becoming director of the school.

Social Activism

Woss y Gil played an important role in the woman's suffrage movement in the Dominican Republic that won women the right to vote during the

Rafael Trujillo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina ( ; ; 24 October 1891 – 30 May 1961), nicknamed ''El Jefe'' (; "the boss"), was a Dominican military officer and dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic from August 1930 until Rafael Trujillo#Assassination, ...

dictatorship. In 1927, she along with Abigaíl Mejía,

, Trina de Moya, Ana Josefa Puello, and other artists and educators founded ''Nosotras Club'', the first feminist organization in the country, which advocated for woman's liberation and the betterment of children.Danilo de los Santos. Memoria de la Pintura Dominicana. (Colección Centenario Grupo León Jimenes) 8v: vol 2. Grupo León Jimenes. Santo Domingo, 2003. pg 24 Years later, in 1931, Acción Feminista Dominicana (AFD) was established, with the purpose of the “intellectual, social, moral, and juridical development of women”.Arregui, Marivi. "Trayectoria del Feminismo en la Republica Dominicana." ''Ciencia y Sociedad''. volumen XIII, numero 1; Enero - Marzo 1988. pg 11. The organization pursued Dominican women's right to vote, and launched a feminist

manifesto A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent ...

in 1931, claiming the right to gender equality in the country's Constitution. Women were officially granted the right to vote in 1942.

Notable works

In 1939, Woss and Gil's was exhibited in the World Painting Exhibition at the New York World's Fair, obtaining a Medal of Honor for her painting; this painting depicts two men smoking , a form of dried, compressed, fermented, and rolled

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

for pipe smoking and chewing widely used in Dominican Republic since

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

times. The background of the image displays working people going about their everyday lives, as well as children playing beneath a

Arecaceae The Arecaceae () is a family (biology), family of perennial plant, perennial, flowering plants in the Monocotyledon, monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbing palm, climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly k ...

palm tree and a blue sky. The painting travelled around the United States well into the 1940s.

Gallery

File:Woss y Gil the marketplace.png, Woss y Gil "Mercado" Oil on canvas. 1944 File:Woss y Gil portrait of woman resting.png, Woss y Gil. Woman resting. 1941 File:Celeste Woss y Gil 01.jpg, ''Nude'', 1941 (

Museo de Arte Moderno The Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM) is a museum dedicated to modern Mexican art located in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City. The museum is part of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura and provides exhibitions of national and internat ...

) File:Woss y Gil male nude.png, Woss y Gil. Desnudo Masculino. 1941 File:Woss y Gil girl with fig tree.jpg, Woss y Gil. "Girl with fig tree" - Oil on canvas File:Woss y Gil portrait of woman with pink dress.png, Portrait of lady in pink dress. Oil on canvas. Year unknown File:Woss y Gil Paisaje de Nueva York.jpg, Woss y Gil. Paisaje de Nueva York. 1940 File:Portrait of President Alejandro Woss y Gil.png, Woss y Gil. Portrait of President Alejandro Woss y Gil

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woss Y Gil, Celeste 1890 births 1985 deaths Dominican Republic educators Dominican Republic women educators Art educators Art Students League of New York alumni 20th-century Dominican Republic painters 20th-century Dominican Republic artists Dominican Republic expatriates in France Dominican Republic expatriates in the United States Dominican Republic expatriates in Cuba Founders of educational institutions Artists from Santo Domingo Dominican Republic portrait painters Dominican Republic women painters Children of presidents of the Dominican Republic 20th-century women painters