The inspiration of European artists has always fueled Ferrer's active mind, offering vast material for visual exploration as well as invention.

Ferrer's new work pays homage to the European master, Alberto Giacometti.

By entering into the studios of modern masters such as Giacometti, Ferrer reveals aspects of their work and personae that only an artist can uncover.

The gouaches are not literal depictions of Giacometti's studio.

They are works conceived by the artist using the sculptor as raw material, a touchstone for Ferrer's rich imagination.

Giacometti's studio, as one might imagine, is a panoply of browns, grays, whites, blacks, little color; however, Ferrer infuses it with warmth in a palette that ranges from bright orange to blue to pink.

At times the studio is a setting for the artist to combine faces akin to his masks of the '70s with slender totemic Giacometti figure sculptures.

At other times the studio is filled with layered images, figures, faces, sculptures, a wood-burning stove, bottles infused with Morandi's tranquillity.

In the midst of this creative environ-ment is the artist's hand, sometimes painted beige, sometimes brown, at other times black, and finally white. This is the hand that creates the paintings on paper.

It speaks for the hands of the artists Ferrer honors.

Included also in the exhibition is a series of eight intimate self-portrait gouaches of the artist at this time in his life, all with intense, vibrant eyes, all with his characteristic beard, all but one in shades of white in thick and scumbled impasto.

There is a sole colorful piece depicting Ferrer with black hair, blue shirt and living flesh color in his cheeks.

When Ferrer began his paintings in the '50s, his first abstract yet figure-referential painting was created with David Smith in mind.

During his career, Ferrer has created sculpture, paintings, painted tents, constructions of wildly original materials, environ-ments with neon lights, even happenings, with leaves and ice in the late '60s and early '70s.

He is an artist whose imagination knows no bounds. It is an endless source of richness.

In October the gallery will host a show of Ferrer's oil paintings created over the past three years.

Rafael Ferrer was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1933.

He studied at Staunton Military Academy where he learned to play the drums.

In 1951 he went to Syracuse University where he began to paint on his own.

Ferrer moved to New York in 1954 to work as a drummer at night and to paint by day.

He returned to Puerto Rico in 1959 and in 1963 began to exhibit his paintings at the University of Puerto Rico galleries.

In 1966 he moved to Philadelphia to make art and teach.

From 1966 forward, Ferrer devoted himself to his painting full-time, a self-taught artist.

Ferrer's work has been widely shown in this country at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio;

Center of Contemporary Art, Miami; Center for the Arts, Vero Beach; Center for the Fine Arts, Miami; Columbus Museum of Arts and Sciences, Georgia; The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Dayton Art Institute, Ohio; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; The Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, Connecticut; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale; Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan; Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina;

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, San Juan; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Austin, Texas; Madison Art Center, Wisconsin; Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York; Pan American Union, Washington, D.C.;

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; Queens Museum of Art, Flushing, New York; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; The Spanish Institute, New York and Americas Society, New York; Tampa Museum of Art, Florida; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, among other institutions, and abroad at Musee d'Art Contemporain, Montreal; Palazzo Ducale, Italy; Tamayo Museum, Mexico City.

His works are included in numerous public collections, among them Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland;

The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Lehmbruck Museum, Duisberg, Germany; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota, Colombia; Museo de la Princesa, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo de Ponce, Puerto Rico; Pasadena Museum, California; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The artist has been the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships; grants from the Pew Foundation and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and a Guggenheim Award.

Rafael Ferrer and his wife reside in New York.

For additional information and/or photographs, please call 212-966-6676.

IN THE STUDIOS... all works in this series are graphite and gouache on paper, 12 3/8 x 9 inches, 2000.

SELF PORTRAITS all works in this series are gouache, gesso, graphite on Indian Village handmade paper, 8 x 6 1/4, 1998.

MORE ON RAFAEL FERRER

go to FERRER's Biography