Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Less well known but nonetheless prolific is Palma-born Ferran García Sevilla (b
1949), whose canvases are frequently full of primal colour and strong shapes and images.
Since the early 1980s he has exhibited in galleries throughout Europe. Joan Costa (b
1961, Palma) is one of the island's key contemporary sculptors, who also indulges in oc-
casional brushwork.
One cannot leave out 20th-century Catalan icon Joan Miró (1893-1983). His mother
came from Sóller and he lived the last 27 years of his life in Cala Major, just outside
Palma, where his former home is now a museum, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró. Work-
ing there in a huge studio, he maintained a prolific turn-out of canvases, ceramics, statu-
ary, textiles and more, faithful to his particular motifs of women, birds and the cosmos.
MIRÓ & MALLORCA
Joan Miró grew up and spent most of his life in Barcelona, but Mallorca was his
spiritual home and it became his permanent abode when he moved here in the
mid-1950s. The island was an endless source of inspiration to the artist - the hori-
zons, the 'eloquent silence', the pure brilliance of the light, and the vivid blues of
the sea that were reflected in works such asBleu I, II, III(1961), a three-part series
of intensely hued paintings.
The bustle of Santa Catalina market, the crescent-shaped patterns of the Moors
and Mallorcan folk art (baskets, pottery and the ceramic peasant whistles calledsi-
urells) inspired his increasingly expressive and abstract work.
Here Miró could walk through the streets and listen to the organist in the cathed-
ral unnoticed, and he relished in this anonymity. His studio on the outskirts of the
city gave him ample breathing space to fully immerse himself in his art. 'I invent
nothing, it's all here! That is why I have to live here!' he enthused. And live here he
did until his death in 1983 aged 90.
Crafts
Tourism may have led to the overdevelopment of the Mallorcan coast, but it has enabled
the revival of many traditional crafts and artisan workshops, among them those working
with metal, ceramics, paper, glass, leather and jewellery.
The Consell de Mallorca tourist office, its airport branch and some municipal tourist
offices around the island have a fine little brochure entitled
Map of Arts & Crafts in Ma-
jorca,
pinpointing 21 artisan producers working in a range of materials.
