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Candido Bido

Dominican Republic, 1936 - 2011

BiographyCandido Bido is one of the Dominican Republic's most famous contemporary artists. His extraordinary paintings are exhibited worldwide and have been featured in several monographs of the artist. Yet it is the rare tourist who has even heard of Bido let alone stumbled upon his gallery. This ignorance has as much to do with its off-the-tourist-track location as it does with the artist himself. A quiet, modest man, Bido has attained greatness in part because he promotes others rather than himself. His paintings reflect great love for the people who live in his native, rural Cibao Valley.

Graduating from one of the top 10 schools of fine arts in the world, the Escuela de Altos de Chavon, he was also an art professor at the National School of Arts. In 1962 he worked as assistant professor at the National School of Arts and between 1962 and 1967 he was a Faculty professor at National School of Arts of Drawing and Arts. He founded in Santo Domingo, Cándido Bidó Art Center, where he taught painting, drawing, and sculpting. In 1987 he closed the art center and left the Cándido Bidó Art Gallery in Santo Domingo.

He founded the Cultural Center Plaza in Bonao, Dominican Republic de Bonao and the Cándido Bidó Art Museum, in Bonao, Dominican Republic. 1987. He also founded the School of Arts of the Dominican Air Force in Santo Domingo in 1996.

Santo Domingo's major art museum, the Galería de Arte Moderno, has a collection of Bidó's paintings. His work is also displayed at the Fundación Bonao Para La Cultura, the organization he started in his hometown of Bonao to provide art education, entertainment, and cultural facilities to the Cibao community.

The sun is the hallmark of much of Bidó's work and his colors are intense. Sun-hot colors were so integral to Bidó's work that the gallery sold small cans of his signature paints, custom colors he created himself: blazing yellows, turquoise-sea blues and fiery shades of orange.

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