Elevating the guest experience, the hotel is delighted to announce a new collaboration with the iconic Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Mallorca, where internationally renowned Sóller-based artist Francesca Martí will feature her works in the lobby. Martí's unique and inspiring sculpture creates an impact for guests upon arrival and this collaboration means that our art lovers who stay at the hotel can also combine the sights of Palma de Mallorca with an exclusive Gerhardt Braun gallery tour.

There is also a repeat collaboration with local artist Lolo Garner, with a ‘butterfly’ sculpture just outside the lobby and painter Carla Raads, who showcases her oil on canvas collection inspired by incredible sunsets. 

Sculpture in the fountain

At the hotel, Martí’s larger-than-life ‘Humilis’ sculpture welcomes the viewer to distant horizons. Shimmering in turquoise at the entrance of the lobby, standing in fountain beneath the lobby’s glass dome, Martí’s monumental sculpture appears to be walking on water, in a shimmering circular pool, overlooking the bay of the Port de Sóller.

Born in Soller, Francesca Martí is a world-renowned artist whose work encompasses sculpture, photography, installation, video, drawing and performance. She uses her work to discuss such global issues as migration, mass-communication, chaos and the loss of collective memory. However she never loses sight of her ability to transmit strong personal emotions and creative passion. Since 1990, Martí’s work has been featured in exhibitions in museums and galleries in Spain, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Slovakia, the U.K, the U.S., Jordan, Korea, China and beyond.

Focusing on aspects of human behaviour, Martí’s sculptures are symbols of positive change, unity, action and progress.  As they stand, walk and run, her Believers provide a universal portrait of mankind. ‘They are like explorers discovering new lands,’ says the artist. ‘My sculptures begin with modeling clay with my hands, shaping forms in a tactile way.’ Later in a foundry in Madrid, these sculptures are cast on a larger scale.

Meanwhile, a group of her smaller Believers in yellow and purple traverse across one of her photographs of a city in flux. The manipulated image in this installation in the gallery area of the lobby, is part of a cycle of works created by Martí, in which she shows urban areas in Amman, Madrid, New York, Shanghai and Stockholm, simultaneously depicted as being cities in dynamic growth and in dramatic decline. In dialogue with her sculptures in Yellow Energy Ray (2020), Martí interprets the codes of human communication, expressed through the subtle gesture of the tilted head of one of her smaller figures or the energetic movement of one of her Believers in motion.

Martí’s ongoing series of Dreamers and Believers are expressive human figures which exist as beacons of hope in a larger, complex world. They are posed alone as monumental sculptures in bronze and polished aluminium, revealing the handmarks and fingerprints made by the artist while she was sculpting them in her Mallorcan studio, or they are gathered together in groups of smaller figures, migrating through the landscape, striding towards the future.

Mallorcan Sunsets

Carla Raads is a professional abstract seascape and landscape artist who channels the power and intensity of nature and emotion through her artwork. Having grown up along the Eastern Cape coast of South Africa, Carla has a deep connection with nature that serves as the foundation for her evocative paintings. She believes in breaking down barriers between inspiration, emotion, and canvas and utilizes her hands as a direct medium to translate her innermost feelings onto the surface of the canvas. With each stroke, she imparts her body's weight and kinetic energy to capture the essence of the dynamic Mallorcan skies at sunset in the five large scale paintings in the lobby.

The Butterfly Effect

The artists Lolo Garner and Biel M. Panizza consider a butterfly to be a concept of evolution and change and have returned this season with their iconic sculpture that consists of a large butterfly 4 metres wide and 4.2 metres high, is made up of more than 180 butterflies. The ‘Butterfly Effect’, as they see it, is about triggering positive change and peace and is located just outside the hotel lobby. Additionally, at night, the LED lighting system can be used to create motion and a more magical effect to the sculpture. The Butterfly Effect has already been positioned in Placa Cort, Palma old town and numerous other cities and the artists Lolo Garner and Biel M. Panizza wish to communicate that a better world is possible via this sculpture.