DIana Cid Garcia de Dampt 1861-1938

Born in 1861 in Lobos, in the province of Buenos Aires, Diana Cid García de Dampt belonged to the pioneering generation of women artists who contributed to the emergence of Symbolism in Latin America while becoming fully integrated into Parisian artistic circles.

Determined to pursue a career as a painter, she was only sixteen when she travelled to the French capital and settled in Montparnasse. There, she studied under Edmond Aman-Jean (fig. 1), with whom she soon formed a close friendship, even becoming godmother to his son. In 1898, she married one of his closest friends, the French sculptor Jean Dampt, an important figure in the revival of the decorative arts, with whom she occasionally collaborated.

From 1894 onwards, she exhibited regularly at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, while also developing a remarkable international career through frequent exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Her work attracted the admiration of the poet Rubén Darío, who regarded her as one of the revelations of the emerging Argentine school of painting and emphasised her affinities with Parisian Symbolism.

Returning to Rio de Janeiro to further her training at the National School of Fine Arts, Diana Cid García de Dampt formed close relationships with Eliseu Visconti and the brothers Henrique and Rodolfo Bernardelli. She became one of the first Latin American women artists to exhibit regularly in Brazil.

In 1904, the painter and critic Eduardo Schiaffino organised a solo exhibition of her work in Buenos Aires. That same year, he selected six of her works for the Argentine pavilion at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis, where she was awarded a bronze medal.

Long overlooked by art history before being rediscovered through recent research devoted to women artists,¹ her œuvre—populated by dreamlike female figures, mysterious allegories and daring nudes—belongs fully to the international Symbolist aesthetic. It combines the influence of Aman-Jean, Puvis de Chavannes and Art Nouveau with a profoundly personal sensibility.

¹ Inna Pravdenko, “Diana Cid Garcia’s Story as an Exercise in the Imaginative Reinvention of the Art Worlds”, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Los Angeles, January 2022, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 44–57.