Ada Balcácer a recognized artist, designer, printmaker, painter, muralist, cultural promoter, theorist and teacher from the Dominican Republic. She’s an artístic personality of Caribbean descent, whose aesthetical, theoretical approaches, and quality of work, make her an essential figure in the history of art from the Caribbean and Latin America.
Ada Balcácer, was born in poverty in Santo Domingo, on June 16, 1930.
Her early childhood years were spent between Santo Domingo and San Juan de la Maguana, land of her grandfather.
Thanks to the strong initial education received, she entered formal education by the fourth grade. She then permanently settled in Santo Domingo, but maintained the bond with San Juan de la Maguana, which later became her vacation home.
At the age of 16, one event changed her life: she lost her left arm in an accident. It was while attending a parade in San Juan de la Maguana with her childhood friends that Ada Balcácer, riding a horse, slid from her saddle, hitting a curb on the street and fracturing her wrist. The accident resulted in a loss of the fractured left arm.
“… when I lost my arm, for two months I was disoriented in my decisions. A friend pushed me towards art, and I found my destiny…”
She decided to enter the National School of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo, from which she graduated in 1951.
She then travelled to the United States and settled in New York, where she remained until 1961, working as a textile designer, becoming the first Dominican textile designer. A few years later, a visit to Mauricio Lasansky’s workshop in Iowa – considered the father of modern-print-making, helped expand her horizons in fine arts.
Positivistic and pragmatic, intuitive and suspicious, the young student avidly read classics and contemporary works. She learned to love poetry and assimilated the importance of combining craft and intellectual formation as instruments for people to come out of poverty. Principles later applied to a successful program for destitute women.
She participated in the New Image movement that emerged in 1972. Her paintings made use of light and warm colors that are generated from one another, and which shine.
Ada Balcacer became one of the five most significant artists in the history of the Dominican Republic, and the most important Dominican artist living today.
Balcacer’s paintings represent a mixture of great beauty, whimsy, romance, substance, magic, and power.