Luis Desangles Lubiles was a Dominican painter, sculptor, and educator born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Instructor to many of the great native artists of the era, Desangles is remembered as one of the forerunners of Dominican national art and initiators of the country's costumbrismo style.

Abelardo Rodríguez Urdaneta was a Dominican sculptor, photographer, painter and educator. A prolific artist, he was one of the first successful multidisciplinary artists of the modern art era in the Dominican Republic and is considered to be one of the forerunners of Dominican sculpture, photography, and painting. His creative work consists of a large number of portraits, busts, statues, monuments and pictorial paintings in which he collected important moments in the country’s history that reflected the lives of social leaders, merchants, and families of the time.