They were
the posters that launched a thousand party nights.
They made an Ibiza nightclub into one of the world's most famous discos
and were avidly collected by fans on holiday from all over the world.
Carlos
Díaz Genicio's artwork did for Es Paradis Terrenal in Ibiza what Tolouse-Lautrec
did for the Moulin Rouge in Paris a century before.
He was
born in Oviedo (Asturias) on 9th June 1952, and studied in the Arts School of
Oviedo, where he soon started to be distinguished and gain a good reputation
as a very talented young artist, with a bright future ahead.
Carlos
had his first individual exhibition at the age of nineteen, in the "Casa
del Arte y la Cultura" de Oviedo, and also in the same year, in a private
art gallery, "Galería Benedet" in Aviles (Asturias), with big success
in both. In the following years, he participated in more individual and collective
exhibitions in his homeland, Asturias.
In this
part of his early life, Carlos won and was honoured with several painting awards
for his artistic work. At the same time, he was also popular because of working
as a humorist, another face of his artistic talent, drawing a cartoon for a
magazine "Asturias Semanal" an interesting art and culture magazine,
popular in Asturias in those days.
Then came
the army days. It was there and then, when he heard about Ibiza and its style
of life from one of his best friends, who was at university and therefore didn't
have to go in the army until his studies were over. This friend came to Eivissa
for his summer holidays and was so impressed by the Island and its way of life
that when he was back home he couldn't stop talking about it and convinced Carlos
to visit the Balearic Islands as soon as he was released from military service.
In the
late 1960s and early 1970s, Eivissa (still Ibiza those days as Ibicenco-Catalán
was forbidden as an official language until the new democratic constitution
in 1978) had a special magnetism, a kind of mystical and aura of freedom. It
was like a world apart, a country by itself, not just miles and miles away,
but also years and years away, somehow in the past, somehow in the future of
the rest of Spain. It was irresistible for the talented young ones, not just
from Spain, but from all over the world. (The colourful and peaceful hippie
philosophy, with free love, nudist beaches, psychedelic drugs and new sounds,
helped to increase the aura of advanced freedom and tolerance of this Island,
the first "hippie colony" in Europe, nothing to do with the black
or white, therefore grey and dull Spain of Franco's dictatorship).
So, in
1975, Carlos Genicio, after leaving his friends in Mallorca, came for the first
time to the Island. As he was arriving by boat into Ibiza's harbour, on the
deck of the ferry, just by himself, with the sight of the silhouette of the
old town "Dalt Vil-la" in the sunset-twilight, the magic of the moment
and the place, it was love at first sight! He knew that this trip was going
to be very important for the rest of his life. As soon as he stepped on land
and saw the environment, the people of different colours, from all parts of
the world, living and working together in the hippie market in the streets near
by the old marina, he knew then that this was also his place. Next morning,
as he had arrived without a peseta, he was already doing portraits of the tourists
in Ibiza's harbour street market.
This is
how Carlos explains why he came to the Island, his arrival and first impressions
of Eivissa.
Carlos
was living off his art, earning good money painting portraits in the street
for the tourists until the summer was over. It was for him another shock to
see how life changes here from summer to winter. Without tourists he didn't
know how to earn a living, but when he discovered the "other", the
"real" Eivissa, its nature and its genuine people, he didn't want
to go from here. In the winter, when the tourists were gone and the market was
closed, he started producing a new and personal type of terracotta dolls, little
"payesas" painted by hand
that sell very well in all the shops.
After
almost two years, Carlos had to leave the Island for personal reasons, he went
back to Asturias, and from there to Paris, where he continued living off his
art; he was painting in his little studio, and two girls were selling the paintings
in the streets, fifty-fifty with him. Carlos suffered some kind of crisis in
those years, most probably an extra-dose of "will for freedom"; he
felt somehow trapped by the past. He was not interested at all in new painting
exhibitions, he even destroyed his own "curriculum" and most of the
diplomas and awards of his young years (this is why he can not tell now how
many and where he had some of his first exhibitions). This problem had nothing
to do with any drugs or anything like it. Carlos doesn't identify himself with
the hippies, he is not interested in drugs, he already had seen too much of
the harm that drugs can do. He is more of a Latino bohemian, a little drop of
wine, cider or whisky will do. I have always seen him with his head well fixed
on his shoulders and his feet on the ground.
Carlos
was back in Eivissa in 1980, moving to Sant Antoni, where he continued painting
portraits for the tourists in the marina promenade (among his first new clients
was a German couple here on their honeymoon. Carlos painted them both. Twenty
years later, at the end of the summer of 1999, the same couple returned to Sant
Antoni, looking for him to paint them again. It had to be him, it couldn't be
anybody else and she still looks beautiful in the new painting).
Carlos
portraits must be in most of the countries of the world, after more then twenty
years of painting people from all nationalities and races, but his most popular
and well known creations, the series of posters that he created for "Es
Paradis Terrenal" are anonymous to the greater majority of people, even
for those who possess them.
These "Paradis"
posters were done with revolutionary techniques at the time, using computer
techniques and compositions, as soon as they were available for the first time
on the Island. Carlos is now a real expert, the best in this technique, because
he has been doing at least a new one a week, four months per year since 1980.
They are, according to the art experts, little masterpieces, especially the
series with the eggs, the apple and the naked bodies; they can be seen in private
houses, in the best bars, restaurants and clubs all over the world.
In 1985,
Carlos was also designing calico for cloth for the Ibiza fashions week "Semana
de la Moda Ad-lib".
He has
done the painting and the decoration of several bars and restaurants, the last
one in 1999 "Ristorante il Vaticano" by "Café del Mar" in
Sant Antoni. It is worthwhile visiting just to see his splendid murals.
In the
later years, Carlos has become a painting professor as well. In the winter months
he gives drawing and painting classes to several art pupils. He also has done
commercial art in publicity works etc. So, as we can see, Carlos Genicio is
a real complete artist, and a very busy man.
His curriculum
in painting exhibitions on the Island is not very big at all, basically because
he was not very interested in doing so, he never really had the time for it,
it was difficult for him to paint and keep enough paintings for the galleries,
his paintings always sell well and for a good price, but he was earning far
more money by doing his portraits (eight to twelve a night) his posters, decoration
and publicity work. Even so, his paintings have been in several collective exhibitions,
in the best galleries and museums, such as "Galería Alhadros" "Super
Mercado del Arte" "M.A.C" (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Eivissa)
"Galería Van der Voort" etc.
In May
2000, Carlos inaugurated with an individual exhibition, the new art gallery
"Paradis Terrenal" on the top floor of the same Disco-Club, the exhibition
of his oil-paintings of a hyper-realism style, was there again a big success,
and only three paintings out of more then thirty were not sold.
After this
exhibition, Carlos said that he wants to find the time to do more oil painting,
so he can have a new exhibition at least every two years.
Carlos
is a perfectionist. Anything he does has got to be an improvement every day.
It doesn't matter if it is art, giving classes to the pupils, looking after
his family or in his hobbies, for instance rod fishing.
He started to fish on the Island when he didn't know anything about our
Mediterranean Sea and the fish in it, which he soon found were very different
from the Cantabric Sea, (the Bay of Biscay).
He didn't know either our fishing techniques or where to fish the different
types of fish and had to learn it all, but it didn't take him long.
He became a member of the "Club de Pesca Portmany" (the rod
fishing local club). Just a few years after, Carlos won the club competition
and also the Island championship and since then he has been the Island rod fishing
champion for six years, two years more then any other of the old champions of
any other club of the Islands.
Carlos
was married in the middle 1980s to Olga, his charming wife. They have a thirteen-year-old
daughter, Africa, and an eight-year-old son, Carlos Jr.
Carlos Díaz Genicio in his Studio |
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All Pictures Courtesy of Carlos Díaz Genicio |
If you should require information
on purchasing the work from Carlos Díaz Genicio then please don’t hesitate to
contact this office at your own convenience.
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