27/08/2013 00:00
TW
0

Palma.—The American artist Ellis Jacobson who moved to Majorca in 1962, died in his sleep in the early hours of Friday morning at his home in Bonanova, he had been suffering from Alzheimer's which had forced him to retire from public life.

However, his fellow artists kept in touch with him until the very end, visiting him regularly.
Jacobson trained at the San Diego School of Arts and Crafts and was hailed for introducing abstract painting to Majorca and in 1993, he donated 150 paintings to the Balearic government.

He did so claiming that it was the only way he could express his love for the island.
Most of those paintings are in the Museum of Majorca although for a time, some were exhibited in Manacor and a few hang along the corridors of the Balearic parliament building.

Jacobson arrived in Majorca with a vast amount of experience and talent.

Hollywood

He had visited France, painting in the Provence and Paris, Italy and Madrid but he was also an excellent drawer and prior to leaving the States had worked as a cartoonist in Hollywood.

But it was his powerful abstract painting for which he was best known.
Quite often he would paint Red Indians or victims of the Holocaust. “He loved to investigate and was very studious,” said Juan Waelder who commissioned the retrospective exhibition of his work which was staged in La Llonja in 1994. “He wanted to express the most by using the very minimum,” he added.
Jacobson was a member of the so-called Grup Dimecres (Wednesday Group) which included various leading people from all walks of culture and was a contemporary of the late American artists Jim Bird and Ritch Miller who had also decided to make Majorca their home. “They all just loved the island,” said artist Steve Afif.