Edgar Degas
Degas's work was controversial, but was generally admired for its draftsmanship. His "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans", or "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years", which he displayed at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, was probably his most controversial piece; some critics decried what they thought its "appalling ugliness" while others saw in it a "blossoming". In part Degas' originality consisted in disregarding the smooth, full surfaces and contours of classical sculpture ... [and] in garnishing his little statue with real hair and clothing made to scale like the accoutrements for a doll. These relatively "real" additions heightened the illusion, but they also posed searching questions, such as what can be referred to as "real" when art is concerned. The suite of pastels depicting nudes that Degas exhibited in the eighth Impressionist Exhibition in 1886 produced "the most concentrated body of critical writing on the artist during his lifetime ... The overall reaction was positive and laudatory".
Lorenzo Domínguez
In 1939 Lorenzo Domínguez returned to Santiago de Chile and continued teaching sculpture at the Escuela de Bellas Artes. From June to September, 1939, three of his sculptures were exhibited at the New York Riverside Museum, in the Latin American Exhibition of Fine and Applied Art ("Lilión", "Saint Olalla" and "Cajal"). Between 1939 and 1941 Lorenzo Domínguez completed the monument "To Dr. Luis Calvo Mackenna", a Chilean pediatrician. This maternity scene in black basalt is located in the Parque Balmaceda of Santiago. He also completed an important black basalt sculpture, "Portrait of the Moon", the first of his "Planetarium series"; and a stone portrait of the "Painter Augusto Eguiluz". Domínguez's masterpiece from this period is "Victor Delhez", a portrait of the Belgian engraver, carved in Carrara marble.