Miguel Ferrando
Untitled (Darrel Ellis)
1985-1990
Watercolor on paper
15 x 12 in (38.1 x 30.5 cm)
Courtesy Candice Madey, New York
Miguel Ferrando (b. 1957 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – d. 1996, New York) depicts, in a somewhat mystical realism, his formative environments, their histories, and people surrounding him in the Dominican Republic and New York City in the 1980s and 90s. Ferrando frequently referred to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists such as Goya, Velázquez, Cezanne, and Manet. In a series of paintings, Ferrando anachronistically presented art historical references alongside images of famous buildings in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, where his family was from.
Ferrando also produced many still lives and portraits, many of which, like this work, were of his close friend and artist Darrel Ellis. Ellis and Ferrando were active figures in the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s and similarly explored portraiture, still life, and landscape genres. Ferrando worked prolifically in watercolor, using the negative space of the white page as an active constructive element woven into his colors and volumes, which rendered his subjects in a shimmering manner. Writing on his 1990 show at filmmaker and activist K.K. Kean’s loft, Ann Wilson described this “shimmering”:
His is an eclectic art of softened realism, poetic abstraction, with romantic erudition. The scale of his work has the intimate quality of chamber music, sequencing images and weaving form and abstraction in light to create resonant duration.
Both Ellis and Ferrando succumbed to AIDS; Ellis died in 1992, and Ferrando in 1996.
Provenance
Candice Madey, New York
Also from the Neal Baer Collection
Darrel Ellis, “Self-Portrait” c. 1991
Darrel Ellis, “Laure and Mother in the Grass, diptych” 1985-87
Peter Hujar, “Darrel Ellis (III),” 1981
See also
“Darrel Ellis and Miguel Ferrando,” Candice Madey, New York, September 5 – October 25, 2024
“What to See in Galleries in October,” New York Times, October 24, 2025