|
They were the posters that launched a thousand
party nights. They made an Ibiza nightclub into one of the
world's most famous discos and were avidly collected by fans
on holiday from all over the world.
Carlos Díaz Genicio's artwork did
for Es Paradis Terrenal in Ibiza what Tolouse-Lautrec did
for the Moulin Rouge in Paris a century before.
He was born in Oviedo (Asturias) on 9th
June 1952, and studied in the Arts School of Oviedo, where
he soon started to be distinguished and gain a good reputation
as a very talented young artist, with a bright future ahead.
Carlos had his first individual exhibition
at the age of nineteen, in the "Casa del Arte y la Cultura"
de Oviedo, and also in the same year, in a private art gallery,
"Galería Benedet" in Aviles (Asturias), with
big success in both. In the following years, he participated
in more individual and collective exhibitions in his homeland,
Asturias.
In this part of his early life, Carlos won
and was honoured with several painting awards for his artistic
work. At the same time, he was also popular because of working
as a humorist, another face of his artistic talent, drawing
a cartoon for a magazine "Asturias Semanal" an interesting
art and culture magazine, popular in Asturias in those days.
Then came the army days. It was there and
then, when he heard about Ibiza and its style of life from
one of his best friends, who was at university and therefore
didn't have to go in the army until his studies were over.
This friend came to Eivissa for his summer holidays and was
so impressed by the Island and its way of life that when he
was back home he couldn't stop talking about it and convinced
Carlos to visit the Balearic Islands as soon as he was released
from military service.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Eivissa
(still Ibiza those days as Ibicenco-Catalán was forbidden
as an official language until the new democratic constitution
in 1978) had a special magnetism, a kind of mystical and aura
of freedom. It was like a world apart, a country by itself,
not just miles and miles away, but also years and years away,
somehow in the past, somehow in the future of the rest of
Spain. It was irresistible for the talented young ones, not
just from Spain, but from all over the world. (The colourful
and peaceful hippie philosophy, with free love, nudist beaches,
psychedelic drugs and new sounds, helped to increase the aura
of advanced freedom and tolerance of this Island, the first
"hippie colony" in Europe, nothing to do with the
black or white, therefore grey and dull Spain of Franco's
dictatorship).
So, in 1975, Carlos Genicio, after leaving
his friends in Mallorca, came for the first time to the Island.
As he was arriving by boat into Ibiza's harbour, on the deck
of the ferry, just by himself, with the sight of the silhouette
of the old town "Dalt Vil-la" in the sunset-twilight,
the magic of the moment and the place, it was love at first
sight! He knew that this trip was going to be very important
for the rest of his life. As soon as he stepped on land and
saw the environment, the people of different colours, from
all parts of the world, living and working together in the
hippie market in the streets near by the old marina, he knew
then that this was also his place. Next morning, as he had
arrived without a peseta, he was already doing portraits of
the tourists in Ibiza's harbour street market.
This is how Carlos explains why he came
to the Island, his arrival and first impressions of Eivissa.
Carlos was living off his art, earning good
money painting portraits in the street for the tourists until
the summer was over. It was for him another shock to see how
life changes here from summer to winter. Without tourists
he didn't know how to earn a living, but when he discovered
the "other", the "real" Eivissa, its nature
and its genuine people, he didn't want to go from here. In
the winter, when the tourists were gone and the market was
closed, he started producing a new and personal type of terracotta
dolls, little "payesas" painted by hand that sell
very well in all the shops.
After almost two years, Carlos had to leave
the Island for personal reasons, he went back to Asturias,
and from there to Paris, where he continued living off his
art; he was painting in his little studio, and two girls were
selling the paintings in the streets, fifty-fifty with him.
Carlos suffered some kind of crisis in those years, most probably
an extra-dose of "will for freedom"; he felt somehow
trapped by the past. He was not interested at all in new painting
exhibitions, he even destroyed his own "curriculum"
and most of the diplomas and awards of his young years (this
is why he can not tell now how many and where he had some
of his first exhibitions). This problem had nothing to do
with any drugs or anything like it. Carlos doesn't identify
himself with the hippies, he is not interested in drugs, he
already had seen too much of the harm that drugs can do. He
is more of a Latino bohemian, a little drop of wine, cider
or whisky will do. I have always seen him with his head well
fixed on his shoulders and his feet on the ground.
Carlos was back in Eivissa in 1980, moving
to Sant Antoni, where he continued painting portraits for
the tourists in the marina promenade (among his first new
clients was a German couple here on their honeymoon. Carlos
painted them both. Twenty years later, at the end of the summer
of 1999, the same couple returned to Sant Antoni, looking
for him to paint them again. It had to be him, it couldn't
be anybody else and she still looks beautiful in the new painting).
Carlos portraits must be in most of the
countries of the world, after more then twenty years of painting
people from all nationalities and races, but his most popular
and well known creations, the series of posters that he created
for "Es Paradis Terrenal" are anonymous to the greater
majority of people, even for those who possess them.
These "Paradis" posters were done
with revolutionary techniques at the time, using computer
techniques and compositions, as soon as they were available
for the first time on the Island. Carlos is now a real expert,
the best in this technique, because he has been doing at least
a new one a week, four months per year since 1980. They are,
according to the art experts, little masterpieces, especially
the series with the eggs, the apple and the naked bodies;
they can be seen in private houses, in the best bars, restaurants
and clubs all over the world.
In 1985, Carlos was also designing calico
for cloth for the Ibiza fashions week "Semana de la Moda
Ad-lib".
He has done the painting and the decoration
of several bars and restaurants, the last one in 1999 "Ristorante
il Vaticano" by "Café del Mar" in Sant
Antoni. It is worthwhile visiting just to see his splendid
murals.
In the later years, Carlos has become a
painting professor as well. In the winter months he gives
drawing and painting classes to several art pupils. He also
has done commercial art in publicity works etc. So, as we
can see, Carlos Genicio is a real complete artist, and a very
busy man.
His curriculum in painting exhibitions on
the Island is not very big at all, basically because he was
not very interested in doing so, he never really had the time
for it, it was difficult for him to paint and keep enough
paintings for the galleries, his paintings always sell well
and for a good price, but he was earning far more money by
doing his portraits (eight to twelve a night) his posters,
decoration and publicity work. Even so, his paintings have
been in several collective exhibitions, in the best galleries
and museums, such as "Galería Alhadros" "Super
Mercado del Arte" "M.A.C" (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo
de Eivissa) "Galería Van der Voort" etc.
In May 2000, Carlos inaugurated with an
individual exhibition, the new art gallery "Paradis Terrenal"
on the top floor of the same Disco-Club, the exhibition of
his oil-paintings of a hyper-realism style, was there again
a big success, and only three paintings out of more then thirty
were not sold.
After this exhibition, Carlos said that
he wants to find the time to do more oil painting, so he can
have a new exhibition at least every two years.
Carlos is a perfectionist. Anything he does
has got to be an improvement every day. It doesn't matter
if it is art, giving classes to the pupils, looking after
his family or in his hobbies, for instance rod fishing. He
started to fish on the Island when he didn't know anything
about our Mediterranean Sea and the fish in it, which he soon
found were very different from the Cantabric Sea, (the Bay
of Biscay). He didn't know either our fishing techniques or
where to fish the different types of fish and had to learn
it all, but it didn't take him long. He became a member of
the "Club de Pesca Portmany" (the rod fishing local
club). Just a few years after, Carlos won the club competition
and also the Island championship and since then he has been
the Island rod fishing champion for six years, two years more
then any other of the old champions of any other club of the
Islands.
Carlos was married in the middle 1980s to
Olga, his charming wife. They have a thirteen-year-old daughter,
Africa, and an eight-year-old son, Carlos Jr.
|
|
|
Carlos Díaz
Genicio in his Studio
|
|
|
|
|
Blank
|
Blank
|
|
|
|
|
Blank
|
Blank
|
|
|
|
|
Blank
|
Blank
|
|
|
|
|
Blank
|
Blank
|
|
|
|
Carlos
Díaz Genicio in his Studio
|
|
|
|
Carlos
Díaz Genicio in his Studio
|
|
|
|
Carlos
Díaz Genicio in his Studio
|
|
|
|
Carlos
Díaz Genicio in his Studio
|
|
|
|
|
Blank
|
Blank
|
|
|
|
|
Blank
|
Blank
|
|
|
|
Blank
|
All Pictures Courtesy
of Carlos Díaz Genicio
If you should require information on purchasing
the work from Carlos Díaz Genicio then please don't
hesitate to contact this office at your own convenience.
| |
