Given that the longest drive we can have here on Eivissa is no more then forty-five kilometres, at most, without having to drive back, I have the feeling that we take a trip around the entire Island when Gary and I go to visit our international artists.
We have the unique chance to listen to them talking about their intense cosmopolitan lives and the way they finally established themselves on our Island after showing their Art in many countries on several Continents.
This is what I was thinking about last Tuesday afternoon, in the pleasant company of Marcel and Mary Floris, sitting on the terrace of their house, surrounded by the original garden and forest, with a glass of tasty and healthy fresh tomato juice that Mary had made and kindly offered us.
Marcel Floris was born in France in 1914, but he’s lived a good part of his life in Venezuela, as a director of one of the biggest and best publicity and commercial-art-design companies in that country. It was also there where Marcel had his first art-exhibitions by the end of the 1950s and started to be recognised as a very talented creator.
Marcel and Mary arrived to Eivissa in 1971. With the help of Agnete, from the bar-restaurant Cana Agnete of Sant Carles, they found this little casa payesa, not far from Santa Eulari, and decided to buy it to make it their own home, adopting also the Island as their new homeland, where they have been living, successfully and peacefully up to present.
The house itself keeps most of its original elements, even the Ibicenco “good luck blue” in parts of its genuine “sabina roof”, obviously with the necessary changes, also enlarged with some new rooms, but keeping the local design, built with the local materials and dry-stone walls.
It is like a little museum, full of art and Pre-Columbus archaeology pieces, in which, the sensitive hand of Mary can be seen in a lot of details. Mary is a lovely person, a loving wife full of vitality and joy for life, discreet and clever, with a high artistic feeling; she does her own artistic works, like her collage that I hope she will decide to exhibit in future. It will be a real pleasure to be able to write about them soon. They are both really good people; it was a real pleasure meeting them, a privilege and honour for any society they bless by their presence.
In their finca, they have also built Marcel’s studio and workshop, of a bigger size then the house, with all the tools and materials necessary for his creative job.
Being in it, as he was showing it to us, I confessed to him my total ignorance about most of his works (I only knew the sculpture that he donated to Eivissa City and some of his things shown in the Museo d’Art Modern d’Eivissa) as well as his style of Art (Constructivist Art, as I think it is called).
Marcel, understanding my problem, lent me one of the books about his Art work, published by the Galerie Lahumiére of Paris, in which he explains his vision of his Art. The following is from this book.
“Not wishing here to list all my former research work, it was in 1974 that I practically abandoned metal constructions based on geometrical planes and the use of mirrors and only retained the lines that delimit them in order to create transparent volumes and spaces."
“To achieve this, the materials had to be completely different from those I had previously used, hence the choice of cables or, even better, elastic cords that had the advantage of ensuring a permanent rectilinear tension whatever the atmospheric variations might be."
“My first achievements were groups of pyramids whose scale and size, two to three metres high, were substantial enough to allow the viewer to move about these constructions evoking esoterical associations and feel the space created by the transparent planes and volumes suggested by simple straight lines."
“These works have led me to add, with the help of the same cords, in juxtaposition to the volume, the drawing of a plane on a vertical wall used as a supporting surface, so that the volume originates on one side of the plane and, in a way, materialises it."
“This juxtaposition brings about two new factors, one of them being ambiguity that makes the plane appear, by its extension of the volume, as if it were a mass in itself, and the other one being the reversibility produced by the plane drawn in axial perspective."
“The third logical step consisted in liberating me from the support, namely the wall, to create autonomous works.
“The material could no longer be the cord which necessitates one or several fixed points to tighten it. I therefore returned to the use of metal, using bars of minor section or diameter to create small-sized works that would later be designed on a larger scale."
“These later works have given me two additional effects, one being, from certain angles, the reversibility of the volume joined to the plane, the other being the transformation of the plane into a simple line when in profile."
“The reversibility both of the plane and the volume creates the illusion of a reciprocating motion completely non-existent in an inert piece of work.
“The transformation, only by the power of the mind, of the plane into the volume, the mutations of appearance into reality and reality into appearance could be interpreted as the concretion, through works of art, of the multiple subjective interpretations of the verity."
“This research and their guiding lines induced the next works such as painted-wood relieves where, owing to a particular device used in assembling the structure, two superimposed parts can create the impression of a transparency by means of an opaque material."
“These two parts appear as if they were challenging each other to obtain the predominance of one over the other. This conflict leads to a simultaneous preponderance whose result is, by this selfsame fact, the nullification of the precedence and its transformation into imaginary sensation of transparency."
“These works followed by the linear constructions of painted iron, then aluminium, with suspended bars freely revolving and swaying by the only effect of the displacement of air. These works combine a definition of the inscribed space with the suggestion of a relative space, moving, apparently traced by the mobile’s suspended bars."
“The touching of these bars among themselves or against the supporting surface produces various sounds at extremely variable intervals of silence, adding a random element of time and transformation."
“The iron constructions present an ambiguity created by the real angles joining together the planes suggested by the surrounding lines and the angles set up on a same plane. As the random transformation and the time element due to the mobile parts subsist, the sound is practically non-existent."
“As a different approach, the designing of mobiles and small-sized geometrical constructions made of wire mesh which encircle space between their transparent planes add, by mere shifting movement, the shimmering effects of a moiré as well as the dematerialization of light effects."
“Throughout these works and those whose creation has been achieved simultaneously in time, I try to sensitize space, to underline the changing relations between moving lines, to accentuate the ambiguity of certain connections between angles, planes, masses and lines, to integrate sound, time and light, to suggest the virtual movement and generate the transmutation of realities into appearances. Within this particular vision of geometry, I try to retrieve a refuge of poetry, meditation and peace.”
Marcel Floris
June 1984
One Man Shows
1960
Gallery Foundation Mendoza, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1962
Gallery Motte, Paris, FRANCE
1964
Gallery Bolles, San Francisco, USA
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, VENEZULA
1966
Gallery Dawson, Dublin, EIRE
1967
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1968
Gallery Conkright, Caracas, VENEZUELA
Casa de la Cultura, Maracaibo, VENEZUELA
1969
Gallery Conkright, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1972
Gallery Van der Voort, Eivissa, SPAIN
Gallery Conkright, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1974
Gallery Van der Voort, Eivissa, SPAIN
1975
Gallery Lanzenberg, Eivissa, SPAIN
1976
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1977
Gallery Arte Contacto, Caracas, VENEZUELA
Gallery International, Madrid, SPAIN
1978
Gallery Christine Colin, Paris, FRANCE
Gallery Jesse, Bielefeld, GERMANY
1979
Museo Villa Vizcaya, Miami, USA
Public Library of Dade, Miami, USA
1980
Gallery Sutton, New York, USA
Gallery CB2, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1981
Fundación Miró, Barcelona, SPAIN
Gallery Schoeller, Düsseldorf, GERMANY
Gallery Sutton, New York, USA
1982
Studio 1, Musée d’Art Moderne Kunst Landreis, Cuxhaven, FRANCE
1984 Gallery Maloney, Eivissa, SPAIN
1986
Gallery Blauer Ofen, Seeheim-Jugenheim, GERMANY
1987
Gallery Dorothea van der Koelen, Mainz, FRANCE
Gallery Franka Berndt, Paris, FRANCE
1990
Gallery Lahumiére, Paris, FRANCE
Group Shows
1956
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1964-65-66-67
Pintores Internacionales, Valencia, VENEZUELA
1965-78
Gallery Byron, New York. USA
Austin University Museum, Texas, USA
1966
Facultad de Arquitectura, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1966-67
Exposition Irlandaise d’Art Vivant, Dublin, EIRE
1966-68
Movimiento y Color, Gallery Conkright, Caracas, VENEZUUELA
1967-70
Confrontación, Atenea de Caracas, VENEZUELA
1968-70
Bienal de Medellin, COLOMBIA
1968
Pintura y Grabados de Venezuela y Colombia
Gallery Buchholz, Munich, GERMANY
1969
Newland Galleries, Los Angeles, California, USA
Gallery Denise René, Paris, FRANCE
Biennale de Sao Paulo, BRAZIL
1970
International Exhibition, Osaka, JAPAN
Color, Línea y Luz, Gallery Conkright, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1971
Gallery Buchholz, Bogotá, COLOMBIA
Gold Medal in Biennale de Sao Paulo, BRAZIL
1972 Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1973
Biennale of Sculptures, Budapest, HUNGARY
1975
Gallery Schlégl, Zurich, SWITZERLAND
White Gallery, Lausanne, SWITZERLAND
1978
Gallery Van der Voort, Bale, SWITZERLAND
1979 Public Library of Dade, Miami, USA
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, VENEZUELA
Arte Construido Caracas, VENEZUELA
1980
Gallery 99, Bal Harbour, Miami, USA
Gallery Sutton, New York, USA
1981 Equitable Gallery, New York, USA
I.G. Metallgesellschaft AG, Fracfort, GERMANY
1986
Kronkret Sech, Nuremberg, GERMANY
1987
De 2 Carrés, Wilhem-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, GERMANY
Institut Français, Minz, GERMANY
1988
Gallery de Stis, Doedrecht, HOLLAND
1989 En 3 Dimensions, Gallery Lahumiére, Paris, FRANCE
1989
Gallery Dorothea Van der Koelen, Mainz, GERMANY
1989-90
International Fairs in Frankfurt, Bale, Chicago, and the FIAC, with the Gallery Lahumiére of Paris, FRANCE
Museum of Klagenfurt, AUSTRIA
Awards
1967
First Prize Asociación del Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, VENEZUELA
1968
National Prize of Painting, VENEZUELA
1969 National Prize of Sculpture, VENEZUELA
1971 Golden Medal in the Biennale of Sao Paulo, BRAZIL
Museum Acquisitions
Canada Contemporanean Art Museum, Montreal
Colombia Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá
Museo La Tertulia, Cali
France Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris
Italy Instituto Latino-Americano, Roma
Mexico Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico D.F
Spain Museo d’Art Contemporaní d’Eivissa
F. l’Autoroute Mediterranie, Barcelona
USA Modern Art Museum New York
Institut Smithsonian, Washington DC
Museo del Arte Latino-Americano, Washington DC
Public Library of Dade, Miami
Public Library of Dade-South, Miami
Instituto de la Cultura, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Carnegie Library, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Germany Modern Art Museum Kunst Landreis, Cuxhaven
Bergen Museum, Glandbanch
Venezuela Galería de Arte National, Caracas
Instituto Los Teques
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas
Museo de la Cultura, Maracaibo
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mérida
Museo de la Fundación Jesus Soto, Ciudad Bolivar
All Pictures Courtesy of Marcel Floris
José P Ribas