In the exhibition, Íconos de nuestra historia [Icons of Our History], the Puerto Rican artist Domingo García presented portraits of thirteen countrymen and women. In García’s opinion, these public figures were significant in the unfolding of the Island’s history as symbols of a collective Puerto Rican past. The Puerto Rican curator living in the United States, Mari Carmen Ramírez, wrote that García undertook the urgent task of constructing visual icons in order to recover and disseminate the memory of our past. Held in 1991, this exhibition “recoge el drama visceral de quinientos años de nuestra historia” [concentrates the visceral drama of five hundred years of our history] through these images and/or icons. Ramírez explains that no homogeneous style characterizes these works; instead, there is an eclecticism in some classic paintings and others that are postmodern, and vice versa. Íconos is “una búsqueda, esencial para nuestra supervivencia colectiva” [a search that becomes the gist for our collective survival]. In addition, it is a way of recovering colonial history “del olvido, encendiendo memorias y evocando símbolos, que al presentarlos e interpretarlos nos concienticen” [from oblivion by awakening memories and evoking symbols whose appearance and interpretation will raise our awareness]. 

The exhibition, Íconos de Nuestra Historia, was held from January 17 to March 25, 1991, in the Museo de Historia, Antropología y Arte de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Rio Piedras [Museum of History, Anthropology, and Art at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus]. The artist exhibited portraits of: Agueybana II (c. 1511), Eugenio Maria de Hostos (1839–1903), Juan Ponce de León (1459–1521), José de Diego (1866–1918), Ramón Emeterio Betances (1827–1998), Ramón Power (1775–1813), Román Baldorioty de Castro (1822–1889), Don Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965), Lolita Lebrón (b. 1919–2010), Luis Muñoz Marín (1898–1980), Blanca Canales (1906–1996), Juan Mari Bras (b. 1928), and Juan Antonio Corretjer (1908–1985). Domingo García (Coamo, b. 1932) grew up in New York City and lived in the Big Apple for long stretches of time; however, he never broke his ties to Puerto Rico. In 1957, he returned to the island, and one year later, he founded the Galería Campeche in Old San Juan. This gallery provided a workshop, school, cultural center, and gallery where art training was provided for many of the young artists of that time. From 1988 to 1994, he was the director of the Galería Latinoamericana in Old San Juan. He also served as an instructor at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de San Juan [San Juan School of Visual Arts], from 1990 to 1997.