Category: Artists

Martin Bialas (born 1963 in Stuttgart) is a german artist based in Ibiza. He studied at St. Martin’s School in London in 1982 and moved to Paris in 1986. Since 1992, he lives and works between France, Spain, and Morocco; since 2013, Ibiza is his main base.

His practice includes sculpture, drawing, painting, and wall installations. Language, writing, signs, and symbols are central to his work. He often uses natural materials and simple linear forms, translating them into bronze through the lost-wax casting process. The Sahara Desert is an important source of inspiration and a recurring reference in his artistic development.

Bialas’ work connects material presence with ephemeral traces. It moves between text, object, landscape, and memory.

www.martinbialas.com

Maria Catalán (born 1961 in Castellón de la Plana) is a spanish artist who lives and workes in Ibiza since 1981. She studied at the Escuela de Arte in Ibiza between 1984 and 1988 and subsequently continued her artistic development in the studio Eduard Micus, where she worked for more than a decade.

Catalán´s practice is rooted in painting and characterized by a quiet, contemplative approach to form, colour, and composition. Her works often balance abstraction and representation, drawing inspiration from the landscape, light, and atmosphere of Ibiza. Through a reduced visual language, she explores subtle spatial relationships and the emotional resonance of colour, creating images that invite sustained observation.

Over the course of her career, Catalán has exhibited in Spain, Germany, France, and other European countries. Her work reflects a continuous engagement with perception, memory, and the transformative qualities of light, establishing a distinctive position within the contemporary art scene of Ibiza.

Christoph Dahlhausen (born 1960 in Bonn) is a German artist, curator, and author. Following studies in music, medicine, and philosophy, he established an international artistic practice focused on the interaction of light, colour, and space. He lives and works between Bonn, Trier, and Melbourne.

He works across sculpture, installation, painting, and architectural interventions. Using materials such as glass, mirrors, coloured acrylic, reflective surfaces, and artificial light, he creates perceptual situations in which colour and light become active spatial elements. His practice is rooted in the traditions of concrete and constructive art while exploring the viewer’s experience of space and perception.

Recent projects continue his investigation of colour as a spatial phenomenon and of light as a transformative force. Through large-scale installations, public commissions, and site-specific works, Dahlhausen explores how perception is shaped by movement, architecture, and changing environmental conditions. Alongside his artistic practice, he has been active as a curator and educator, including teaching and research positions internationally, as at RMIT University in Melbourne.

www.christoph-dahlhausen.de

Stephan Micus, born in Stuttgart in 1953, is a musician, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. At the age of sixteen he began travelling through Asia and the Middle East, developing a lifelong fascination with the world’s diverse musical cultures. Over the decades he travelled extensively through Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, studying traditional instruments directly with local master musicians.

At the center of his work is the exploration of new musical landscapes. Rather than playing instruments in a strictly traditional way, Micus develops new musical possibilities within them, often combining instruments from different cultures that had never previously been heard together. His compositions — usually recorded alone through layered overdubs — bring together instruments such as sitar, shakuhachi, nay, zither, kalimba, and sho, alongside his own voice, creating meditative, transcultural soundscapes of great intimacy and depth.

Since 1976, Stephan Micus has released his work on the ECM label. His oeuvre now comprises 28 albums, many of which are currently being reissued on vinyl. In addition to numerous solo concerts across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, his music has also been used by leading contemporary dance companies worldwide.

www.stephanmicus.com

Lulu Micus, born on Ibiza in 1990, is a ceramic artist with a background in carpentry. Her first training shaped her precise and focused approach to material, form, and construction. Today she lives and works near Murnau, where she runs her own ceramic studio.

Her ceramic work is defined by clear, geometric, and reduced forms. She creates objects for everyday use that combine functionality with a quiet formal presence. Working with different types of clay, surfaces, and pigments, each piece develops its own tactile and visual character.

At the core of her practice is the connection between precision and simplicity. Her work follows a restrained visual language guided by proportion, balance, and the subtle rituals of daily life. A closeness to nature and traditional craftsmanship remains present throughout, alongside an interest in contemporary design and clean structures.

@lulumicus

Mara Micus, born on Ibiza in 1989, is a silversmith and goldsmith trained in Neugablonz, a historic center of metal craftsmanship in Germany. After years abroad, she returned to her native island, where she now lives and works from her own studio.

The landscape of Ibiza and the traces left by nature are central to her practice. She collects found objects such as stones, wood, and sea-worn materials, transforming them into unique jewelry pieces with an organic and often sculptural character. Her work combines precise craftsmanship with organic, often sculptural forms, allowing each object to retain something of its original history.

Alongside jewelry, she also creates silver objects and custom commissions. Her studio moves between traditional craftsmanship and an artistic exploration of material, memory, and place.

@maramicus

Katja Micus, born in Stuttgart in 1956, is a goldsmith and curator. She trained as a goldsmith in Neugablonz and later studied industrial design at the Academy in Hamburg. Since 1985, she workes independently from her own studio on Ibiza.

Her work combines traditional goldsmithing with an open and experimental approach to materials. Alongside precious stones, she incorporates found objects from nature and everyday life into her jewelry. Her wide-ranging craftsmanship extends from delicate early works to bold, sculptural rings and lightweight acrylic pieces set with precious metals.

In 2000, following the death of her father, artist Eduard Micus, she took over the direction of Espacio Micus on Ibiza, the exhibition space he founded. Since then, she has continued to run it as an independent space for contemporary art alongside her own artistic practice.

Helene B. Grossmann ( born 1943 in Dresden) studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden from 1981 to 1985. She then relocated to Munich, where she established her studio.

Grossmann’s practice centers on painting as a medium for exploring light. Since the early 1990s, she has focused on the materialization of light through layered color structures. Her works are characterized by subtle chromatic transitions, depth, and a shifting perception that evolves with changing light conditions. The interplay between transparency, reflection, and color creates an immersive spatial experience.

Her practice maintains a consistent investigation of perception, spatial depth, and the transformation of light into painterly form.

www.helenegrossmann.com

Elena Vinyàrskaya is a Belarusian-born artist who lives on Formentera since 2017, where she began developing her artistic practice as a natural and therapeutic response to adapting to island life.

Originally trained in Translation and Interpreting, she first worked in hyperrealistic drawing and watercolor before turning toward abstraction after reaching what she considered a technical limit, though subtle traces of realism continue to anchor her compositions. She experiments with color and visual effects to create highly expressive artworks, evolutioning towards a more intuitive and atmospheric form of painting.

Working mainly with oil paint, oil pastel or charcoal, Vinyàrskaya balances expressive emotion with a clear, controlled technique, influenced by the landscape and quiet atmosphere of Formentera.

www.elenavinyarskaya.com

Manuel Salgado is a Madrid-born multidisciplinary artist, based on Ibiza since 2021, focused on sculpture and its dialogue with the island’s natural environment.

His work explores form, weight, and balance through stone, wood, metal, and mixed media, consistently engaging with the textures, contrasts, and geological character of the Mediterranean landscape. Early pieces were shaped using the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique, carving and charring wood to create structures reminiscent of carbonised stone. Later he included local sandstone such as marés and living rock, the medium of his most recent works.

Salgado reveals a clear evolution towards increasingly reduced, abstract organic forms that emerge from a negotiation between conceptual intention and the inherent resistance of the material. His work demonstrates a continuous search for form, texture, and structural clarity, rooted in a close dialogue with the island’s geological landscape.

@manuel_salgado