LáZARO FERRé

Barcelona 1945

He begins his studies in the Baixas Academy.

San Jorge Art College.

Mural painting school in San Cugat del Vallés, under the teacher Miquel Farré, with a scholarship from the Barcelona Provincial Council.

He studies engraving at the Art College.

He collaborates with the painter Ramón Vincens on the Bankisur mural in Barcelona (Chamber of Commerce).

Assistant to Professor Francisco Ribera Gómez at the San Jorge Art College.

PRIZES

1968     First prize for drawing                                       San Jorge Art College

            First prize for Christmas cards                            San Jorge Art College

1969     First prize for drawing                                       San Jorge Art College

            Second prize for painting                                   San Jorge Art College

1970     Prize from Barcelona City Council for the most distinguished student of the 1969-70 academic year.

            Scholarship from the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation in Granada.

1971     Study scholarship in the Paluar de Segovia, silver medal from the Regional Council of Segovia.

1972     XIV Painting Prize, Joven Sala Parés. Premio F.Gimeno

1976     Picasso bronze medal. Málaga

            Second prize for painting in the ?Premio Miguel Carbonell?, in Molins de Rey.

?José Luis Lázaro Ferré stands out among Catalans for the number and quality of his works?

                                                                  October 01, 1971

                                                                  EL IDEAL, GRANADA

?José Luis Lázaro Ferré exhibits two extraordinary drawings and some landscapes where the theme is only a pretext or support for the rhythmic play of the brushstrokes,  with a predomination of reds and mauves which take on a radically musical tessitura?

                                                                  September 5, 1972

                                                                  EL ADELANTADO, SEGOVIA

?Lázaro Ferré paints with almost pure or totally pure colour, in loose, but well conjugated brushstrokes, without irritating fading-out, allowing them to vibrate with a subtle, almost breathable air.....

.....he has a certain propensity for ?fauve? chromatism which is compensated by the feeling of the light....?

                                                                  July 28, 1975

                                                                  MUNDO DIARIO

                                                                  Francesc Gali

?.....A peaceful vision which discovers and reveals reality rather than repeating, inventing and counting, from a contained and quite explicit impressionism. Lázaro Ferré, is an artist for whom we predict a happy future, judging by a close look at his current work?

                                                                  November 14, 1975

                                                                  SUR

                                                                  J. Mayorga

Lázaro Ferré, is a highly sensitive artist who shows his training, professionalism and creative ability with great simplicity. Unquestionably, a good exhibition?

                                                                  February 04, 1976

                                                                  NUEVA RIOJA

                                                                  Roberto Iglesias

Lázaro Ferré works from a realism as crude as life itself and enhances it on the massive filling of colour, making it simple, pleasant, almost poetic, without needing to fall back on tradgedy. Sensitivity here has its greatest transcendency, because the light has no prescribed path or defined time. Lázaro Ferré is a born artist.?

                                                                  March 29, 1977

                                                                  EL NOTICIERO UNIVERSAL

                                                                  Rafael Santos Torroella

?His vision of the 'Sagrada Familia' is an example of his mastery, sidestepping the architectural theme and turning the Gaudian facade into a purely pictorial question.?

                                                                  March 30, 1977

                                                                  SOLIDARIDAD NACIONAL

?With his vibrant pallet and fleeting vision, the painter constructs his landscapes, his still lives, his figure themes. But this passionate vehemence, almost a "fauve" resonance or a light expressionism, is contained by the ordering and balancing tendency which marks the constant effect of the work of Lázaro Ferré.?

                                                                  April 02, 1977

                                                                  EL CORREO CATALÁN

?Talent and sensitivity in the approach of the paintings, with excellent qualities and textures. Works which will be enjoyed.

                                                                  March 25, 1987

                                                                  DIARIO DE TARRAGONA

                                                                  Vicente J. Amiguet

Reviews from his exhibition at the Kreisler Gallery in Madrid from February 17 to March 11, 2000.

EL PUNTO DE LAS ARTES
Editor: José Pérez-Guerra
Madrid, 25 February to 2 March 2000

Lázaro Ferré and the Joy of Living
by Julián H. Miranda

Just like Matisse in his famous painting The Joy of Living, where the great French painter evokes a mythical image of the world as he wished it to be in a kind of golden age, in the paintings of José Luis Lázaro Ferré (Barcelona, 1945) there is an idea of universal harmony, whether in the figures, still lifes with or without landscape, or in his somewhat surreal compositions, with that classicist arrangement through which he manages to strike a difficult balance between lyricism and avant-garde elements that take us back to Cezanne and especially Picasso. The Catalan painter studied at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Jorge and later expanded his knowledge of mural painting and engraving. His drawing ability stood out right from the start and he won a number of prestigious awards as a young artist, including the Barcelona City Hall Award and the 14th Sala Parés Youth Painting Prize. Most of his individual exhibits have been held in Catalan cities, though he has also exhibited in Malaga, Cuenca, Logroño and Madrid. The Madrid exhibit was held 24 years ago at the Bética gallery.

Lázaro Ferré now presents about 30 pieces at the Kreisler gallery, including oils and works on paper. He once again demonstrates his warm simplicity in works such as Terrace, by placing a flower pot and fruit on a table with a spacious background that shows us a poetic and unequivocally Mediterranean Sea; The Café, a small still life with fountain pen, spectacles, pipe, black telephone, bottle, glass and oil lamp, with a small frame that provides a hint of the human presence. He does it with that subtlety in the rhythm of greys, which becomes more ironic in Still Life with Fly Swatter. His attraction to the human figure comes out again in Lovers I and II, with a woman listening to a seashell and a man playing the cello with a musicality in the blue tones that endows their bodies with considerable plastic solidity, something that comes out again in Balancing Act, an oil painting on paper with a woman, who has a Cubist air about her, standing on a horse?s back. Thanks to the steady gradation of yellows, the hard profile of her face is somehow accentuated. Musical rhythms, nature and the human figure are present in many of these works, such as The Guitar, the Cat and the Bird; Chess, Violin and Fish; Fruit with Violin and In Tune, where he displays a masterly command of the use of pastels with a violin on a round table delimiting the space. The exhibition also includes his original landscapes of Seville and Sitges, the plasticity and elegance of his somewhat Magritte-style Hats, and the incredible detail of Table with Lemons, with its fluent brushstrokes that draw out the yellows against a greyish background to create a plastic language rife with stylistic coherence.

(Kreisler, Hermosilla 8, Madrid. Until 11 March 2000.)

EXPANSION
25 February 2000
Lázaro Ferré, at the Kreisler

José Luis Lázaro Ferré is an extraordinary landscape artist who uses his artistic sensitivity to explore simplicity and his own inexhaustible creative capacity. His widely varying palette shows that his talent is growing by the day, and he is also a perfectionist because every detail in his paintings is handled with the utmost care.

Moreover, his extensive experience allows him to escape unscathed when applying and mixing colors and when producing his now characteristic chiaroscuros.

All this should draw our attention to the fact that Lázaro Ferré is one of the best artists of the moment, and entirely capable of awakening the sensitivity of his admirers. This is an unbeatable opportunity to visit the gallery and acquire art that is not only beautiful, but a good deal for the money.

Lázaro Ferré has a profound sense of order, which leads him to give priority to the harmonious structure of the composition. And he does not take the tragic route or massively pile on color, two of the frequent errors of mediocre painters. The constant dialogue between perspective, balance and compositional harmony charges his paintings with more than solid experience.

And yet his brushstrokes are free and smooth, as if he let all his wisdom softly slip into the canvas.

Lázaro Ferré. Kreisler Gallery. Calle Hermosilla 8, Madrid.
February-March