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Bertumeu Mayáns Torres was
born with "a taste of salt and the laughter of the seagulls",
(as he himself loves to say) in the fishermen's ward of "S'a
Riba" in Ibiza Town's harbour in 1944.
He took his basic studies in the common
school in Ibiza, but as it was difficult times he soon left
the school at a very young age and started working as a barber's
apprentice.
Now he says he doesn't regret at all leaving
school so early, so young. He is convinced that thirty years
in any university would only have made him more ignorant.
From his point of view, the best school of the lot - and the
only one worthwhile learning from - is life itself.
He soon gained the reputation of being a
stylist hairdresser. It was the beginning of the Rock "n"
Roll era and hair started to be important.
Here I must say that "Kennedy"
was born a real artist, (even he still didn't know it then).
He has a high artistic personality, he was an artist with
the hair, but, being in the right place, he could have been
a successful "pop" or flamenco singer, or a very
good actor (he still is). Or a bullfighter, which would have
been much easier, with far more chances of success then becoming
a painter.
In the early 1960s, he moved down to work
in a barber's shop ("Can Mañanet") in Sant
Antoni, that was already by then the centre of the Ibiza's
tourist night life.
It was there he started to be called "Kennedy"
by some of his customers, probably because of his similar
young looks to the new president of the USA and also because
those days, after work, he was out every night to the local
Spanish guitar bars. He used to join the guitar players and
sing along with them and they even wrote a song about him.
He had a lot of rhythm, a good voice and
no inhibitions at all, which was an infallible way to pull
the tourist girls. He was all over the place and became very
popular and a little bit envied by some.
On Sant Antoni summer nights, people used
to say of him that he was more famous than John F. Kennedy.
Somehow he assimilated this name so well that when the American
president was killed, a lot of people on the Island thought
it was him and not the president who had been shot.
Then came the army. During his military
service, here in Ibiza, he became the officers' hairdresser.
This got him out of trouble a few times over his bohemian
nights until one day when his captain asked him on a Sunday
morning when he was supposed to be off duty to cut his son's
hair for a special occasion. "Kennedy" always has
been a bit rebellious, but he did the job and then shaved
the poor boy's hair right off. Of course he was arrested for
doing this and his own hair was also completely shaved off,
which was normal those days in the Spanish army for anyone
who was arrested. But as his army days were almost over, he
didn't seem to worry about it.
After the army he decided to go to England.
It was the place that all the young look and fashion came
from, in the days of the Beatles and Carnaby Street. London
was the place for the talented and ambitious young ones to
go, and he was there for a few years.
He was back in Ibiza in the middle 1970s
with the reputation of having been the hair stylist of famous
pop groups. Very soon one of his old friends opened up a new
hairdresser's business for him to run. Kennedy's was in Sant
Antoni's best area by the side of the Town Hall.
The business was a success and the shop
was always full of customers. Everything seemed to be perfect
for "Kennedy" to settle down, start earning good
money and have an easygoing life.
But things didn't mean to be this way. Something
was wrong. He wasn't happy. Something was missing.
It was his years of wine and roses, but
soon, too soon, the roses became thorns and the wine turned
into vinegar. His continued abuse of alcohol led his life
into a real mess and he lost everything, almost his own life,
or even worse, his mental health. "I know Hell, I have
been in it," he says when he talks about those days.
But from this chaotic self-destruction, the real artist was
being born. His art started to be released. "Kennedy"
was so thin that inside his skin there was no room for both
his shrinking bounds and his growing art.
Was this big amount of self-destruction
necessary for the Art creation? It was a very hard shell to
break for this bird to fly!
He ended up with no choice. It was painting,
not just "only painting" but creating a bit of art
every day from and with what you had got, day by day. It was
carrying on painting, or else. Death was the best bet, probably,
the only choice.
He had nothing left but his (mostly unknown)
art and his enormous will for surviving, surviving for his
art.
"Paintings cure; my paintings cure.
They have saved my life, like a life jacket in a sea-wreck
and they can help and cure other people. There is all my hope
and faith in it," he says now. He was being very honest.
Kennedy's artistic evolution is also pure therapy.
Obviously "Chumeu" Mayáns
Torres "Kennedy" ("Fá lo que toca!"
as he will say) did what should be done. ("Chumeo"
is another Ibicenco word for Bertumeu; this is the name that
he prefers to be called and known. Don't call me Clay, call
me Ali).
Art helped "Chumeu" from the very
beginning, not only spiritually. He used to pay his restaurant
bills with his first drawings and paintings, saying: "This
wall is too empty; you need a couple of good paintings up
there. I will not charge you anything for them. I'll just
come and watch them for a few days, while I'm eating."
They all agreed and today they all feel proud of it.
His paintings decorated bars and restaurants
all over the Island. Soon his work was spotted by people who
follow and collect art and by the experts of the art galleries
that opened up the doors for him, as soon as he had enough
good work ready for it.
His artistic evolution was notorious and
very personal. His techniques, first pencil and inks, soon
"collage," oils, acrylics and mixed techniques,
which sometimes show, like in dreams, a memory, a reflex of
his favourite best artist, two of them his personal friends,
Toni Ribas "Portmany" and Vicent Calbét,
Tápies, Miquel Barceló.
But it was all self-taught and therefore
his style is unique. ("I don't need to learn to paint,
painting teaches me. I will learn to paint better when I learn
to live").
His paintings, the colour and the feelings
of his paintings, went from the dark nights, with the most
sullen and gloomy feelings, through different transparencies
and misty twilight, up to the brightest sunny day, leaving
the spirit willing to fly. ("There is no more time for
rancour; I have no capability for any kind of revenge. Painting
speaks for me").
The art experts say of his early exhibitions:
"Kennedy's" paintings are like the cry of the silence.
They are not ideas hanging on the wall; they are feelings,
emotions. You can see passion, anger, affection, sadness and
joy. Of his later ones, they just say he is always himself,
his art is unique, very personal and genuine, but there is
always something new in him. He goes another step ahead; he
is just getting better all the time.
Individual Exhibitions
1986
Sala de Cultura de "Sa Nostra", Eivissa (Ibiza)
1988
Hotel Hacienda, Sant Miquel Eivissa.
Sala de Cultura de "Sa Nostra",
Eivissa.
Galeria Skiros, Eivissa.
Pictograma, Castelló de la Plana.
Centre Cultural d'Aldaia, Valencia.
Centre Cultural de Torrent, Valencia.
Capellán Pallares, Sagunt, Valencia.
1989
Sant Agustí, Eivissa.
1992
Galeria El Coleccionista, Madrid
Galeria Es Llimoner, Sant Antoni, Eivissa.
1993
Galeria Es Llimoner, Sant Antoni, Eivissa.
Galeria Bella & Sioma Baram, Sant Francesc
Xavier, Formentera.
1994
Galeria Es Llimoner, Sant Antoni, Eivissa.
Galeria Arteaga, Eivissa.
1995
Circulo de Bellas Artes, Palma de Mallorca.
1997
Sala de Cultura "Sa Nostra", Eivissa.
1998
Sala de Expossicions "La Caixa"
1999
Galeria Van der Voort, Eivissa..
2000
House Gallery, Eivissa.
2001
Sala de Expossicions "La Caixa",
Formentera.
Sala de Expossicions, Galeria Casino "Ebusus"
Eivissa.
Collective Exhibitions
1988
Galeria de los Artistas, Jesús, Eivissa.
1992
Galeria Es Llimoner, Sant Antoni, Eivissa.
1993
Supermercat del Art, Eivissa.
1994
Escola de Arts i Oficis, "Per la UNICEF".
Eivissa.
Santa Agnés de Corona, Eivissa.
1995
Galeria Alhadros, Eivissa.
Galeria Marta Torres (2), Eivissa.
Supermercat del Art, Eivissa.
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Galeria Van der Voort 9th October
1998
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Original de Kennedy
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20 x 13,5 Tècnica mixta s/
paper 1997
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24,5 x 18,5 Tècnica mixta s/
paper 1997
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49 x 28 Tècnica mixta s/ paper
1997
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23 x 17 Tècnica mixta s/ tela
1997
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30 x 21 Tècnica mixta s/ tela
1997
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55 x 43 Tècnica mixta s/ tela
1997
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José P Ribas
josepribas@liveibiza.com
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