Anneliese Witt, born in Berlin in 1935, settled in Ibiza at a very young age and lived there permanently for almost sixty years, having started a family with the Ibizan painter Rafael Tur Costa in 1960. Arriving on the island so young, she might well have drawn on the local tradition for her ceramics, a tradition which, although discreet, interested her.
This local pottery has always been oriented towards use (jugs, plates, bowls), shaped by equally ancient forms, especially Phoenician ones, since Ibiza began as a small Phoenician colony. One of the ironies of cultural history is that the arrival of plastic forced the “Fenici” workshop to turn to local artistic production, as one of Ibiza’s eminent artists, Joan Planells, known as Daifa, said at the end of his life.
I have taken this small detour to say that, in my view, Anneliese Witt’s inventiveness was inspired by Ibiza in a completely different way: by the sea and the undulations of seaweed. The classical forms of her ceramics are delicately wavy, and their undulation is reinforced by the lines traced in the glaze. There we find a kind of polyp, at once still and dancing. The colours have nothing of Mediterranean cliché: they are greys, or else greens, blues or even extravagant reds. The summer image of Ibiza is one of dazzling blues under a relentless light, but for those who live in Ibiza all year round, grey skies and more muted colours are also part of everyday life in autumn and winter.
Anneliese Witt never renounces modernist classicism; she keeps to the delicate work of form, without expressionism or effects.
Those who, like me, were lucky enough to know her, know that Anneliese Witt breathed a discretion combined with great conviction and perseverance. Her sculpture has the same qualities. You live with it, in its surroundings, in a calm and beautiful everyday life.
Yves Michaud. Writer and art critic. Former director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
CV
ANNELIESE WITT. Art educator and ceramist. In 1954 she finished secondary school in Konstanz and began her studies at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she graduated in art education in 1959. In 1955 she came to Ibiza for the first time with Professor Curt Lahs, as part of a group of fine arts students from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. In 1960 she married the Ibizan painter Rafael Tur Costa and settled permanently in Ibiza. From 1971 to 1977 she taught visual arts at the Escuela Blat in Ibiza, founded by Cis Lenaerts in 1970. In 1977 she opened her own art school for children and adults in Ibiza, called Infantart, where she mainly taught visual expression and teaching techniques for primary school teachers and, from 1986, ceramics as well. She led the team of Infantart students who illustrated the book La carpeta de l’infant Renart, with texts by Joan Cardona Torres, published by the Consell Insular d’Eivissa i Formentera (1994), which she herself translated into German (1999). She worked at the school until her retirement in 2000. Alongside her teaching, she earned a degree in applied arts from the Escuela de Artes y Oficios de Ibiza (1976), when she first came into contact with ceramics in the classes of Joan Planells “Daifa” and Antoni Pomar. She also studied at the Ceramics School of La Bisbal (1981) and attended classes with the ceramist Antonio Peinado (1982). From 1982 she developed a remarkable body of work as a ceramist and, from its founding in 2000, took part in the exhibitions organised by the Association of Visual Artists of the Balearic Islands (AAVIB); in 2008, on the occasion of Expo Zaragoza, she took part in the exhibition Aigua. Also in 2008 she held a solo exhibition in Ibiza at Galería Via 2.