On the road again. Gary and I went to visit our artist for
this week, Andrés Monreal, born in Santiago de Chile in 1937.
Andrés Monreal is one of the most (probably the most at
present) cosmopolitan artists of our plentiful, extraordinary and creative crowd
of local and resident artists on Eivissa-Formentera.
His paintings are known and recognised as exceptional art
pieces in many countries in all the Continents, forming part of public Pinacotheks
in Museums and private collections of Art lovers.
He has gained a well-deserved reputation within the Art-dimension
as a solid and real artist. Not just for the exquisite quality of his paintings,
but also for the amount of challenge, courage and sincerity that he had to put
into it, to make of his own destiny what he always wanted most for his life:
to paint, to be a painter.
This strong determination, since he was very young, has
allowed him to make his own destiny come true and has rewarded him with a very
uncommon and intense life. He has formed his own character as a complete
person while the man-artist was forming, living comfortably and free with his
talented work.
Monreal spends most of his time (when he is not away from
the Island on one of his frequent trips) living and working as he likes best,
almost in complete loneliness in his own house-studio camouflaged in between
the forest in the hills near by Sant Mateu.
If a house can be a reflection of its owner, this particular
one can tell us a lot about him.
To start with, it is not easy to reach. You have to be invited
and guided to it, or else you probably wouldn’t find it.
From the outside, the house, an old and small Ibicenco finca
in its origins, is not pretentious at all. It is neat and cute, rather small
and simple, enlarged by new rooms and the studio, without a defined style but
with a satisfactory final result.
The house has what is needed, without concessions to second
opinions. Inside it changes. It seems much bigger and higher, with plenty of
light that comes into the studio through two sky-lights.
The walls without windows are covered with paintings and
photographs and there are a few pieces of restored old furniture of different
styles and it is also full of art pieces from all over the world, memories of
his very cosmopolitan life and plenty of books - mostly about art - all over
the place. The feeling is intimate, colourful and warm.
“I swapped this house for some of my paintings that I had
in the bar “Can Costa”, in Santa Gertrudis. I like these kinds of deals when
money doesn’t need to show,” Andrés confessed to his friend and journalist Jorge
Montojo in an interview in the newspaper “El Mundo” 14th April 2002,
in which he also says: “I arrived in Eivissa in 1957 for the first time.
“By then I was studying in the Sorbonne, in Paris. I had
a girlfriend that wanted to know Spain and so we both went hitchhiking to Barcelona.
There we met a pleasant person who was living in Eivissa and offered us to visit
him at his house in Sant Antoni”.
“It was a different Eivissa then. I remember that it took
hours with the bus to drive to Sant Antoni; it was stopping all along the road
to let the local peasants, some carrying chickens and even goats, on or off
from it”.
A few years later, Monreal came back to Eivissa to produce
a film, in which he worked as an actor. (Andrés has been in several films, especially
in Madrid, where he was one of the few actors who could speak good English).
Then he decided to live in Formentera for a time. “It was
a splendid and wild Island. I remember that to be able to paint, I had to go
regularly to Eivissa to buy my canvas in “Casa Verdera”.
“There was good money working as an actor, I worked a lot
in Madrid and I also went to Hollywood, where I worked in films with Anthony
Quinn and Robert Mitchum among others. I could have stayed there, but it became
tedious to do always the same role and what I really wanted was to paint. So,
as soon as I had enough money, I left everything and I went back to Paris to
concentrate all my energy in painting.
“I was living in Saint Germain, feeling myself up with a
revolutionary cultural movement that was changing everything. I was living day
by day, astonished by the fast changes. That was good for the creativity.
“I can’t think of my life without painting. Sometimes I
refuse to travel because it is keeping me away from painting”
“When I paint, I try not to think of anything, so the art
flows free. I let the brushes cover the canvas with colours to express ideas
and feelings from the subconscious, like if they were dreams”.
Some art-critics have qualified Monreal’s paintings as “Magic
Realism”, but Andrés, as a real artist, is free and not to be qualified.
“My inspiration comes from many directions, from the literature
that fascinates me, from other painters, from the music, from experiences and
life itself. But in the end, it’s always myself; it is other people that always
have to classify everything, like if they fear that something runs out of control
because it’s free”.
Sitting inside his house, admiring some of his painting
and listening to this super-interesting man, with a glass of beer that Andrés
has kindly offered us, meanwhile Gary doesn’t stop shooting his camera, in perfect
harmony. I make my favourite big question: Andrés, why Eivissa? Why have you
decided to live here and make it your home?
He takes his time and looks at me with this special way
that artists look, that it seems to involve and freeze everything around them.
I could swear that his pupils enlarge and shrink as the
objectives of a camera do while his iris changes colour slightly. I have the
feeling that he looks far beyond my shape and skin. I feel really trapped by
this look and I get lost in its depth. Then, I remember reading that Andrés
was also in the Himalayas, where he met the Dalai Lama in person.
He uses the words as he uses his colours and brushes; only
what needs to be used. There are not wasted words in his fluid conversation.
“I don’t think that man decides anything, I believe in destiny, I didn’t decide
to live here, and I learn to love it with time, like one learns to love a woman.
All I know is that when I’m away, I want to come back, like you want to be close
to the things you love”.
Principal personal exhibitions
1958 |
Wittenbon Gallery, New York,
USA |
1959 |
Galería Beaux-Arts, Santiago,
Chile |
1961 |
Galería Beaux-Arts, Santiago,
Chile |
1962 |
British Institute, Santiago,
Chile |
1965 |
Koltnow Gallery, New York,
USA
Circulo Dos, Madrid, Spain |
1968 |
La Buharda, Madrid, Spain |
1970 |
Galerie Sen, Paris, France |
1975 |
Le Vieux Marché Gallery,
Ottawa, Canada |
1976 |
Le Doigt dans l’Oeil, Bordeaux,
France
Galería Fred Lanzeberg, Eivissa |
1980
|
Galerie Vendome, Paris, France |
1981 |
Galería Es Molí, Eivissa,
Spain |
1982
|
Art Pool, Hamburg, Germany |
1984
|
Il Cenacolo, Piacenza, Italy |
1985
|
Galería Es Molí, Eivissa
The Lessing Gallery, New York, USA |
1987
|
Le Troisieme Oeil, Bordeaux,
France
Galerie Du Bellay, Paris, France |
1990
|
Galería Praxis, Santiago.
Galerie MAG, Paris, France |
1991
|
Galería J.M., Eivissa |
1992
|
Barhard-Biderman, New York,
USA
Galerie MAG, Paris, France |
1993
|
Barhard-Binderman, New York,
USA
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, France |
1994
|
Barhard-Binderman, New York,
USA |
1995
|
Jean-Maris Felli, Paris,
France
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, France |
1996
|
Atelier du Midi, Arles
Galería Es Molí, Eivissa |
1997
|
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, France |
2000
|
Galerie J. Bastien-Art, Bruxelles,
Belgium |
International Saloons and Museums
Modern-Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
Arte Fiera, Bologne, Italy
Royal Academy, London, England
The Male Nude, Home Work, London, England
Arco 82, Madrid, Spain
Figuration Critique, Palais du Luxembourg, Paris, France
Grands at Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui, Grand Palais, Paris, France
Triennal Figuratif, Sophia, Bulgaria
Art pour l’Afrique, UNESCO, Paris, France
Museo de Arte Moderna, Republica de San Marino.
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, France
Museo Ralli, Punta del Este, Uruguay
Dublin Writers Museum, Ireland
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Eivissa
Private Collections
United States, Japan, South America, France, Belgium,
Australia & Africa.
Andrés Monreal, the flamboyant maestro at his work
My hair is turning
green 92 x 73 cm 1991
|
|
Cartographie 100
x 81 cm 1997
|
|
La Samba 30 x16 cm 1997
|
|
Desnudo en la tapiz 100 x 80 cm 1998
|
|
Portrait of the artist as a young man
116 x 89 cm 1998
|
|
Figura arrodillada
100 x 81 cm 1998
|
|
El Toro Escondido
40 x 30 cm 1998
|
|
Impromptu 92 x 87,3
cm 1999 |
|
Etrange interlude
38 x 46 cm 1999 |
|
Gran bodegon 154
x 154 cm 2000
|
|
Danson 180 x 230 cm 2001
|
Cabeza en forma de
lero 37 x 25 cm 2002
|
|
Bodegon del gato
35 x 26 cm 2002 |
|
Bodegon de la mujer 27 x 38 cm 2002 |
|
Apunte sobre Shakespeare 35 x 27 cm 2002
|
|
Infanta 35 x 27 cm 2002 |
|
Bodegon del caballo 36 x 28 cm 2002 |
|
All Pictures Courtesy of Andrés
Monreal
Details: if you should require any further information about
Andrèa Monreal and his work then please don’t hesitate to contact this office
at your own convenience.
Andrés Monreal next exhibition is in the Sala Ebusos, Paseo
Vara de Rey, Eivissa and the inauguration begins in the evening at 8 o’clock,
Friday 25th July 2002. |