For art lovers, Ibiza offers some interesting options. The Contemporary Art Museum, numerous galleries in which local and ex-pat artists, many of whom are of international renown, exhibit their most recent works.
The Ethnological Museum, Puig des Molins Monographic Museum, which is the most important in the world in representation of the Phoenician-Punic period.
Throughout the year, Ibiza stages a multitude of cultural events of great interest: plays, modern music concerts, rock, classical music, craftsmen's exhibitions, etc. Not forgetting each and every local fiesta organised in each municipality. Eivissa underwent particular artistic and cultural growth in the thirties. People from all over Europe, some fleeing from the political overturning of that time, joined together on the island that had hitherto been anchored in the past, and had very reasonable prices. Figures from the European vanguard, such as Raoul Hausmann and Walter Benjamin, were attracted by the island of tolerance and beauty, with elements such as peasant houses, traditional housing the characteristics of which interested architects from the modern movement such as Josep Lluis Sert. These illustrious intellectuals were pioneers in what today is a consolidated tourist industry, but, above all, they made a decisive contribution to the cosmopolitan nature of the island, seen again at the end of the fifties onwards, with successive waves of artists who answered the island's call, a hippy movement that found a reference in Ibiza, that still inspires fashion design today, and contributes its spirit to leather handicrafts and jewellery. All this effervescence bubbled up into what is now the open, and surprisingly varied cultural environment on Ibiza today. Artists, writers, photographers and thinkers seek refuge on an island in which art exhibitions flourish, and where the person having a coffee on the table beside you may be a writer on the crest of a wave, or a well-known artist. |