Rafael Ferrer (Puerto Rican, 1933-2026), Untitled, (Leaning) 9 1/2

Circa 1971, fabricated, welded, and painted steel, unsigned. 115 x 19 3/4 x 38 in. Collection of Sydney and Frances Lewis, Richmond, Virginia Purchased directly from the artist in June 1971 Rafael Ferrer was an important multidisciplinary artist whose artistic pursuits were boundless, dabbling in Surrealism, Minimalism, Expressionism, and conceptual art in works spanning painting, sculpture, collage, performance, and more. His guiding principles were instinct and improvisation, a sensibility that developed out of his background as an Afro-Caribbean jazz drummer in New York bands of the 1950s. Ferrer was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1933 to a wealthy family and was educated in the U.S., attending a military academy and Syracuse University. In 1954, while studying under the Spanish painter Eugenio Fernández Granell at the University of Puerto Rico, he traveled to Paris where he fell in with the Surrealist circle, meeting André Breton and befriending the Cuban painter Wifredo Lam. He taught at Philadelphia College of Art where he engaged with the Post-Minimalist and Process Art movements. Ferrer has had solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1970); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1971); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (1971 and 1979); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (1974). A major traveling retrospective of his work was organized by El Museo del Barrio, New York, in 2010. Ferrer participated in in the important group exhibitions Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, Kunsthalle Bern (1969, recreated at the Fondazione Prada, Venice, 2013); and Op Losse Schroeven, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1969). He has also exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1969 and 1984); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1970 and 1984); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1971); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1971 and 1972). His work was featured in the Whitney Biennial, New York, in 1972 and 1981. He has also received commissions for public art projects in the Bronx, New York (1979), Philadelphia (1982 and 2013), and Puerto Rico (2004). Ferrer is the recipient of several grants, including three from the National Endowment for the Arts (1972, 1975, and 1989). He lived and worked in Long Island, New York, and Vieques, Puerto Rico. Rafael passed recently in September 2026. Sources: Guggenheim, New York Artnet News Areas of rust spotting, paint losses, and some later paint.

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