César Manrique's Lanzarote

Travel Talk with Ed Finn

Saturday, 21 June 2025 - 12 minutes

On today's Travel Talk, we’re diving into the incredible legacy of one man who quite literally shaped the soul of Lanzarote — the visionary artist, architect, and environmentalist César Manrique. More than just an artist, Manrique reimagined what tourism could be — building with nature, not over it — and leaving behind a series of stunning, sustainable, and surreal landmarks that still define the island today."

"From the Jameos del Agua to the Mirador del Río and his former home in Tahíche, now the César Manrique Foundation, his influence can be seen — and felt — everywhere on the island."

"If you’re planning a trip to Lanzarote, you can explore more at turismolanzarote.com and learn about Manrique’s life and legacy at fcmanrique.org — that’s the official site of the Fundación César Manrique."

We take a look at how one man helped protect the soul of this volcanic island and create a truly unique vision of art, nature and architecture

César Manrique (1919-1992) was born at Arrecife, Lanzarote, an island on which his art was to leave an indelible mark. After finishing his studies at the San Fernando Fine Arts Academy at Madrid (where he lived from 1945 to 1964), he exhibited his work on a regular basis both in Spain and abroad. In the early nineteen fifties, he ventured into non-figurative art and studied the properties of matter, concerns that would predominate in his compositions, bonding him to Spain’s contemporary “informalist” movement.

Despite the artist’s abstraction and matter-centrism, the plastic roots of his pictorial production lie in Lanzarote’s volcanic landscape, transformed into a sort of non-realist naturalism which, rather than a copy of the original, is an emotional translation of its significance. “I try to be the free hand that forms geology,” he wrote. In 1964, he moved to New York, where he held three solo exhibitions in the Catherine Viviano gallery. The direct contact with American abstract expressionism, pop art, new sculpture and kinetic art afforded Manrique a visual culture essential to his subsequent creative development.

In the mid-nineteen sixties, upon his return to his native island, he undertook a series of spatial and landscape artistic projects that were not only entirely new at the time, but constituted a statement of his plastic and ethical principles. These actions and interventions aimed to turn the landscape and the island’s natural attractions to value, with a view to generating a new international image and portrayal that would form part of Lanzarote’s adaptation to the tourist economy.

His new aesthetic ideal, called art-nature/nature-art, integrated different modes of artistic expression visible in Manrique’s landscape art: most prominently, Jameos del Agua, Mirador El Río Lookout, Cactus Garden and Timanfaya. Manrique endowed these interventions, intricately associated with the tourist industry, with economic and social functionalism unprecedented in Spanish artistic culture. He created works of this nature on other islands and beyond the Canary archipelago: lookouts, gardens, reconditioning of degenerated areas, shoreline reform, etc. All these works are imbued with the artistic principles he held most dear: respectful dialogue between art and the natural medium and between local architectural values and modern conceits.

For details on travelling to Lanzarote visit - Lanzarote Tourism

Ed flew to Lanzarote in 3hrs and 40 minutes with www.aerlingus.com with flights from €99

Ed stayed at Secrets Lanzarote for the first 4 days of his trip - To book a stay here go to - Secrets Lanzarote part of the Hyatt Inclusive Group of Hotels

Here's a nice video that also shows a lot of the places that we visited on our trip to Lanzarote