Joan Bennàssar is one of Mallorca’s most distinctive contemporary artists, with a career spanning six decades of painting and sculpture. His monumental female figures can be seen in public spaces across the island.
Early talent
Bennàssar’s talent was spotted when he was just 12 by the painter Mateu Llobera, and he trained with the Mallorcan painters Simeó Cerdà and Llorenç Cerdà. Yet unlike many artists associated with the landscape tradition of the Pollença school, he deliberately avoided landscape painting as a young man. Young people, he says, have to be subversive and look for new things.
He went on to study at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and was mentored by the sculptor Jaume Mir.
Two disciplines
Bennàssar divides his days between sculpture and painting: bronze and wood in the morning, canvas in the afternoon. His sculptures, such as the Dama Mediterrània series, have a powerful physical presence, while his paintings explore what he describes as the magic of illusion.
Influences
He points to three main influences:
- Antoni Tàpies, whose poetic abstraction he discovered in Barcelona in the 1970s;
- Paul Cézanne, who showed him that art creates reality rather than copying it;
- the ancient Mediterranean, from Homer to classical philosophy, which feeds his symbolic language.
An exhibition on Pompeii that he saw in London in the 1970s left a lasting impression, visible in the textured, “primitive” surfaces of much of his work.
Women and the Mediterranean
Female figures are central to Bennàssar’s art. He says women in his work represent beauty and admiration, and a tribute to those who came before him. Works such as La Gran Matriarca are both personal and universal symbols. Other recurring themes are Mallorcan identity and humanity’s search for meaning.
International, but rooted
Bennàssar has exhibited in more than 20 countries, including China and the United States. Yet he has always returned to Mallorca, creating site-specific installations, public sculptures and non-commercial exhibitions such as those at the Castell de Sant Carles in Palma.
Still working
Now in his late 70s, he remains prolific, with new bronze works and further exhibitions planned. He says he feels more confident now than ever — but still wakes up with the problems of the previous day, a creative tension that continues to drive his work.
