1959.55 Jorge Damiani, The Wake, 1959

The Wake is an early painting by the Italian-Uruguayan Jorge Damiani, whose inclusion in the Dallas Museum of Fine Art’s South American Art Today in 1959 launched his career in the United States. Soon after, he won a series of grants to train and paint in New York, where his works entered major American collections. This painting is an example of Damiani’s figural subjects, completed before he shifted his focus entirely to depictions of abstract geometric landscapes. Wrapped in a crisply highlighted sheet and laid atop a black marble slab, the lifeless subject appears with a single forget-me-not laid by its head. An unlit candle stands erect in the foreground, bisecting the composition at the knees of the prostrate figure.

Erin Piñon, Tower Gallery: Latin American Art, Label text, 2017.

Italy (nation): TGN: 1000080

Genova (province / Liguria / Italy): TGN: 7003142

Uruguay (nation): TGN: 1000058

oil paint: AAT: 300015050

canvas: AAT: 300014078

painting (visual works): AAT: 300033618

prizes (social recognition): AAT: 300225692

grants (financial aid / economic concepts): AAT: 300080248

training (education): AAT: 300188820

painting (image-making): AAT: 300054216

New York (New York/United States): TGN: 7007567

figures (representations): AAT: 300189808

human figures: AAT: 300404114

male: AAT: 300189559

men (male humans): AAT: 300025928

abstract: AAT: 300108127

abstraction: AAT: 300056508

landscapes (environments): AAT: 300008626

landscapes (representations): AAT: 300015636

geometric abstraction: AAT: 300056509

wrapping (surface covering process): AAT: 300234992

sheets (bed coverings): AAT: 300204598

dead (people): AAT: 300389809

bodies (human and animal components): AAT: 300404640

deaths: AAT: 300151836

mourning: AAT: 300238450

black (color): AAT: 300130920

marble: AAT: 300011443

tables (support furniture): AAT: 300039548

slabs (flat objects): AAT: 300247625

slab tables (general / tables by form): AAT: 300375699

flower (motif): AAT: 300375563

plant-derived motifs: AAT: 300164599

Boraginaceae (family): AAT: 300389961

Forget-me-not (flower / Myosotis scorpioides / Boraginaceae family): DMA

candles: AAT: 300037654

candleholders: AAT: 300037583

candlestands (furniture): AAT: 300039797

darkness (concepts): AAT: 300056031

night: AAT: 300133095

bald (hairstyle): DMA

paint (coating): AAT: 300015029

paint layers: AAT: 300178450

brush strokes: AAT: 300185434

geometric shape: AAT: 300263819

rectangles (parallelograms): AAT: 300055636

lines (geometric concept): AAT: 300056279

From 1959: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas Art Association Purchase [1], [2], [3]

[1] The main source for this provenance was existing information in TMS (in Dallas Museum of Art Digital Collections Records Object Files). Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.  

[2] The main source for this provenance is letter (inventory list) (n.d., copy in Dallas Museum of Art Collections Records Object File, Confidential). Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.

[3] The Dallas Art Association is the predecessor to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. The name was abandoned in 1970. Works from this collection were transferred to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.

Apply to objects where number equals 1959.55