Club Hemingway Project (2015)
In the summer of 2008, my wife María Eugenia and I were invited by my cousins to spend a few days in their beautiful house in the Alt Empordà, a land that had captivated us for its beauty, pleasant climate, good cuisine and human warmth.
It was on that trip that we were fortunate enough to meet Pere de Ribot and Emma Grau, a marriage of extraordinary painters and people, with whom we quickly connected, this was the beginning of a great friendship.
During our visit we had the opportunity to see the work of Pere de Ribot in his wonderful studio of Siurana. Most paintings in large format of landscapes that evoke the land that surrounded us, shaped with a creative, serene hand, full of resources and shades of harmonic color, with a striking and absolutely captivating result.
Pere’s work enchanted us and we immediately invited him to exhibit on the other side of the Atlantic, in the Dominican Republic. The exhibits were held in galleries of reference in our country: the exhibition hall of Club Hemingway, located on Juan Dolio beach, and in the Arte Berri gallery, in the colonial city of Santo Domingo. The exhibitions were an absolute success, both in sales and in audience and critiques. This experience brought the artist into contact with a very different environment, the exuberance of the tropics, vegetation, light and the Caribbean Sea, which he assimilated quickly and would soon incorporate into his work.
With our painters friends, we visited a small and beloved town called Miedes de Aragón, where we commissioned Pere de Ribot a large format painting that turned out to be simply marvelous. The artist was able to capture and interpret the meaning of that land incorporating its fields of rich agriculture, the roofs and its famous and unique Gothic Mudejar defense tower.
More recently, at the end of 2016, the Hotel Casa Hemingway was inaugurated, a “boutique” hotel considered one of the most exclusive in the Dominican Republic, whose design was in charge of the architects Nicola and Gianfranco Fini. From the initial planning Pere de Ribot participated, as in the entrance hall we commissioned an imposing work of 6 meters in hight by 3 meters in width. This masterwork is lit during the day with natural light through a large skylight.
From the final stages of construction of the hotel, Pere de Ribot moved on location, where he spent several months painting the aforementioned painting with a result that can only be described as wonderful. It is a work in vertical format, on the beach of Juan Dolio, which has as its central element its iconic wooden palafito, “La Palapa”, surrounded by the sky, the Caribbean Sea and the beach, brilliantly interpreted. Pere de Ribot’s unique work, of great beauty and personality that will forever remain united to the beach of Juan Dolio and the Dominican Republic.
Jose Antonio Rodríguez Copello
Presidente del Banco López de Haro