Joan Riera Ferrari

JOAN RIERA FERRARI (Manacor, Mallorca, 1943-2017).
Untitled, 1975.
Pair of oils on panel. Diptych.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner of one of them.
Measurements: 99,5 x 99,5 cm (each one).

Joan Riera Ferrari studied at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de Sant Jordi, in Barcelona, where he entered at the age of twenty. It was in Barcelona, in 1967, where he won his first prizes as a painter, and when he finished his career he returned to Mallorca and settled in Manacor. He became economically independent, and held his first exhibition in the Drac Gallery in Manacor, dedicating it to Federico García Lorca. And soon after he organized his first international exhibition, at the Charbonel Gallery in Helsinky. Already at a very young age he would show his pioneering and groundbreaking spirit, and in 1969 he starred in the first artistic installation in Mallorca, in the parish of Manacor, where the placement of a figure of Christ on the cross with his feet in the air caused a great controversy. In the 70s he developed a pictorial series on Ibiza, held several exhibitions in Mallorca, and traveled throughout Europe, visiting Venice, a city to which he would return successively and which would be the inspiration for an important series of paintings. In addition to his artistic activities, he inaugurated the mythical oriental atmosphere local Shamas, and opened the gallery Picarol in Cala D'Or, where the work of young talents, among them Miquel Barceló, would be exhibited. The following years are for Riera Ferrari an intense succession of international exhibitions, with his art always in constant evolution, leaving aside even such successful series as the naked bodies wrapped in fine fabrics, to explore new techniques. He has participated in major international art fairs, such as ARCO in Madrid, and exhibited at the SPI TV Center in Berlin, at the Center for Science and Arts in Munich, and made an important calendar for the Banca March where in each month of the year he represented one of the most important Balearic festivals, and whose exhibition of the original works toured the Balearic Islands. At the beginning of the 90's Riera Ferrari began an artistic journey through North America. He exhibited at the Hartley-Hill Gallery in the Californian city of Carmel, and at the Bill Kroessing Gallery in Los Angeles. After numerous exhibitions in Mallorca, Spain and Europe, he will participate in Sa Llonja in the exhibition 100 years, 100 painters, and later the Consell de Mallorca organizes a retrospective exhibition at the Centro Cultral la Misericordia under the title Retorn a Sempre, and in 1995 he participates in the Artesantander fair with the Ra del Rey Gallery and inaugurates the Ra del Rey Gallery in Madrid with the exhibition Al Otro Lado, all of this seasoned with several exhibitions in Spain and France. In recent years, in addition to several exhibitions, and receiving the Ramon Llull Award for his artistic career, in collaboration with the NGO Llevant en Marxa, he carries out an art auction, A l'Auba, for the benefit of Ethiopia.