Rafael Ferrer (artist)

Rafael Ferrer (born 1933 in Santurce, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican artist. He was a 1993 recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a 2011 recipient of an Annalee and Barnett Newman Foundation Grant. Extensive documentation can be found on his website rafaelferrerstudio.com

From an early age Ferrer traveled between Puerto Rico and the United States, studying in his teens at Staunton Military Academy and then went on to Syracuse University from 1951 to 1953. Since his years at Staunton, he learned to play drums, which began his involvement with Afro-Cuban music. At Syracuse, fellow students introduced him to the world of art through books, causing a failed attempt to register in the Art Department. During his vacations he would travel to New York City, where he would stay with his half-brother, the Academy Award winner actor, José Ferrer, whom he would accompany to Jazz clubs, meeting many of the musicians who were friends of his brother. He also began to regularly visit the Museum of Modern Art, as well as visiting art galleries.

In the fall of 1953 he returned to Puerto Rico and enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, where he spent one year studying with Eugenio Granell, a surrealist painter and writer who was an exile of the Spanish Civil War,. Through this teacher, while on a trip to Europe, he met many of the surrealist group then living in Paris, including its "High Priest" André Breton. His most important early connection was a friendship with the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, who gave and dedicated one of his drawings to the young Ferrer.

In 1955 he moved to New York to work as a musician. He was a professional percussionist until 1960, after which he used it as a means of support while he focused more on his work as an artist in his studio. Since the mid-1960s he has had exhibitions and given lectures and seminars across the US, Europe, and the Caribbean.

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