After conquering the world's great cities, the monumental sculpture La Chaise Adulte (2024), by Dominican surrealist master Iván Tovar (1942–2020)...
After conquering the world's great cities, the monumental sculpture La Chaise Adulte (2024), by Dominican surrealist master Iván Tovar (1942–2020), returns home: the Dominican Republic. To celebrate its arrival and its availability to the general public, a gathering was held on the esplanade of the Museum of Modern Art, where the imposing work was unveiled. Opening remarks were delivered by Carlos Andújar, Director General of Museums. Since 1969, Iván Tovar left us a great legacy with his work The Adult Chair. Tovar's genius lies in transforming an everyday object like a chair into a symbol filled with human connection.
"It has been the decision of the Tovar Foundation to follow the artist's wish by elevating The Adult Chair 2024 to a monumental scale of 4 meters in stainless steel, adding a landmark of great significance to the artist's trajectory," he added. The work was commissioned from the Madrid workshop Capa Esculturas, which generates a visual and emotional impact by blending the exploration of dreams and the subconscious, Andújar explained.
"This monument was exhibited in Times Square as part of the centenary of the first Surrealist Manifesto. Its new location now coincides with the 31st National Biennial of Visual Arts." An emotional moment of the grand event was hearing the words of Daniela Tovar Castillo, daughter of the renowned artist and president of the foundation bearing his name. "It is impossible to speak only as president of the Iván Tovar Foundation tonight — I speak to you also as his daughter, and above all as the daughter of a man who lived within his own world, a world profoundly his own, and yet was capable of touching us all." Referring to the monumental sculpture, she expressed that for her it is more than art in steel — it is a fragment of her father returning to take up space, returning to breathe, "watching us from the silence and telling us: I am here."
She noted that for three months the work stood in the heart of New York's Times Square, seen by millions of people. "Imagine the pride I feel as his daughter, seeing my father's creation shining among lights and screens, engaging with different cultures in an open conversation with the world. A chair placed in the middle of the noise, the light, the urban vertigo — and yet profoundly silent, powerful, unsettling." "Here stands the chair — his, ours — expectant, charged with meaning, as if in a kind of reunion, to become from today part of the landscape of our city and our collective memory."
