Eugene Dobos

Born 1933

Eugene Dobos is a Taos painter and sculptor, born in Dnepropetrovsk, Russia, on Christmas Day.

His evolution as an artist has been marked by phases that appear radically different from each other, but share a common thread of humor, vulnerability, pain and love of beauty. 

The paintings that launched his success were somewhat cynical portrayals of human foibles, often featuring angels, devils, or members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.  His targets were pompous and inflated egos, and snobbery of all forms.  After nearly two decades of such sly prickings, Dobos put down his brush, laid himself down on the living room couch, and after a year of counting vigas he got up and devoted himself to sculpture.  He created puzzling and provocative juxtapositions of familiar objects that tweaked our expectations, challenged our prejudices of the way we see.  Some of the pieces were large and velvet-covered; others were small, mirror-lined boxes, often containing flowers.  One, a mirrored box which contained a dark brown velvet rose placed above a damaged brass bullet shell, had a disturbing symbolism that echoed Dobos’s interest in illusion and touched on such varied associations as coffins, sex, beauty, castration, and death.  From the boxes Dobos returned to painting, though his focus was still on flowers.  He painted large canvases of roses, lilies, and hollyhocks.  A trip to Arizona led to an interest in cacti, and he painted them as abstract, phallic shapes, with a painterly mélange of color.

He later experimented with Krylon spray paint and stencils, painting multiple shadows of dead aspen leaves and hollyhocks across a silver surface.