American Dance Festival 1991, Rafael Ferrer
About the Work
From the Artist
My earliest motivations leading to a desire to make art came from the excitement and admiration I perceived from the works of early 20th-century artists. The Dadaists—with their irreverence and black humor—were important, as were the developments of their influence in New York City in the early 1950s.
No doubt that having been born on an island in the Caribbean, which became a colony of the United States in 1898 and is now the oldest colony in the world, is part of who I am. My art is personal, which means that it responds to my nervous system and is not guided by any overarching philosophy.
—Excerpted from https://mcachicago.org/Publications/Blog/2015/9/In-Conversation-Lynne-Warren-With-Rafael-Ferrer, accessed 6-17-2021
Ferrer's paintings—expressionistic, hard-bitten yet beautiful representations of his native Caribbean—are remarkably alive and potent critiques of both European primitivism and "identity art." In a Ferrer painting, one encounters the same juxtaposition of remarkable natural beauty and grinding, merciless poverty that one sees throughout the Caribbean and the larger post-colonial world.
—Adapted from https://russelltetherfineart.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/the-troubled-tropics-the-art-of-rafael-ferrer/, accessed 6-17-2021
About the Artist
Born in Santurce, a barrio in San Juan, Puerto Rico, artist and musician Rafael Ferrer attended Syracuse University, New York, and the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, where he spent a year studying with Surrealist painter and writer Eugeni...
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