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The painter Ferrer Guasch, beyond whites
The year Vicent Ferrer Guasch was born in what was then a small village of fishermen and little white houses by the sea, San Antonio de Portmany (Ibiza), the port of the town had hosted the ceremony of Pedro’s maritime christening. Decades later, the Ibizan artist would immortalise this sailing boat with his camera and paintbrushes, as well as many other boats and shipyards in the island’s main port.
Two years after Ferrer Guasch’s birth in 1917, another painter visited the island. He was Joaquim Sorolla and was known as the master of colour and light, and he, as well as Narcís Puget Viñas and Josep Tarrés influenced the work of the painter of whites.
The first time his name appeared in the local press was in June 1930, when, along with other fellow students, he finished his baccalaureate and Diario de Ibiza picked it up. Two years later, in early January 1932, when he was still under the age of 15, he presented seven caricatures in a group exhibition of novice artists at the Ebusus cultural society, where he would exhibit so many times throughout his life. Thus began his artistic career.
In the decades that followed, in addition to publishing articles on art and exhibitions or local issues, he exhibited both in the rest of the state and abroad.
The artist knew how to paint the light of Eivissa bouncing off the walls, the houses, the churches and their bell towers. To all this symphony he added the blue of the sea and, from time to time, a human figure that participates in the silence that his work exudes.
Ferrer Guasch’s work makes his geographical origin very clear: the Mediterranean and an island, Ibiza. But although he is the painter who has best known how to express the textures of lime walls and although his oils also show us that there are many whites, his work is more than that.
Like other artists, he went out into the street to paint, but he also used photography to reproduce details of what he saw and wanted to tell: <<I am an impressionist painter>> Today, this photographic archive forms part of the collection of the Municipal Image and Sound Archive of Eivissa (AISME) thanks to the generosity of his daughters.
In short, his pictorial legacy is proof of how the painter Vicent Ferrer Guasch wanted to experiment and evolve from impressionism to cubism, with the colours of the Mediterranean as his horizon.
Fanny Tur Riera
In his watercolours, he shows a refined and highly meticulous technique. His works are warm and luminous, using a remarkable blend of colours in perfect harmony, immersing himself in an idyllic universe of shapes and colours. The landscapes, seascapes, and characters are filtered through his optical lens and masterfully and delicately captured with his brush. Perfection and harmony are common denominators of his extensive and rich body of work.
Possibly the most significant and recognized work, whose legacy still remains today, was his collaboration from 1929 with the Fomento de Turismo de Mallorca. In 1930, this illustrious institution distributed thousands of posters, brochures, and postcard series in various languages, reproducing a large series of Erwin Hubert’s watercolours throughout Spain and abroad.
Officially, this marked the first large-scale advertising campaign for the beginning of Mallorca’s tourism industry, and Hubert instantly became the main and only illustrator of the “Island of Calm,” as it had been named decades earlier by another great artist, Santiago Rusiñol.
From then on, E. Hubert became the reference image for Mallorca. His illustrations (seascapes, landscapes, and genre scenes) would be a constant feature on book covers, travel guides, posters, and general advertising.
Mallorca owes much to the artists who have passed through it, and especially to Erwin Hubert. Initially alongside Archduke Ludwig Salvator and later, thanks to his collaboration with the Fomento de Turismo de Mallorca, he became, by his own merit, an exquisite ambassador of our little paradise. And like all great artists, he did so with composure and restraint, with sobriety and consistency, and above all, with unconditional love for the island that saw him grow and triumph, and in a tragic accident, perish.
Damián Verger Garau
Judicial Expert in Art and Antiques
and Art Critic.