Meeting Artist Ildefonso Aquilar in Lanzarote

Travel Talk with Ed Finn

Friday, 27 June 2025 - 19 minutes

"Ildefonso Aguilar, born in 1945, and he has lived in Lanzarote since 1946. Ildefonso collaborated with César Manrique on several projects in Lanzarote. Aguilar, a musician and painter, was part of Manrique's inner circle and worked with him on various artistic and cultural initiatives, particularly those focused on integrating art and nature. Specifically, Aguilar was involved in:

The Casa del Campesino:

He completed the second phase of this Art, Culture and Tourism Center, originally conceived by Manrique.
The Ruta de Janubio landscape recovery project:

He served as artistic director for a light and sound installation in the Gulf crater as part of this project.
The design of musical ambience for cultural centers:

Aguilar designed the musical atmosphere for venues like Jameos del Agua, Cueva de los Verdes, and Jardin de Cactus.
Audio-visual projects about Lanzarote:

He worked on several projects using photography, sound, and video, exploring the island's unique landscape.
Consulting on cultural and artistic projects:

Aguilar continued to collaborate with various public institutions on artistic and cultural initiatives after leaving his role as director of the Cultural Department of the Cabildo.

He expresses his connection with the island‘s landscape in his paintings, photographs, musical compositions and architectural artworks. He is also an important representative of the ecology movement on the island and is seen as a spiritual successor of Cesar Manrique. From 1963 to 1968, he studied art in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. After that he taught painting and drawing for six years in Arrecife. Since his main activity of oil painting on canvas didn‘t satisfy him personally, he devoted himself increasingly to a lifelong passion, Photography.

He developed a new technique in which he worked on the photographs with sand, first applying glue to the surfaces, then designing them with the sand grains. From an initial idea, he composes landscapes with different sand – fine white grains from the beach Caletón Blanco and coarser dark from Playa Quemada. The surfaces are made of many thin layers and only selected areas exhibit a coarser structure. With a final polish, he gives an even and flawless completion. He actually applied this technique in painting on wood, for example on such that is traditionally used for ship building. Also these sand pictures on wood are distinguished by a particularly harmonious surface.

The bareness of the island, the primitiveness, the purity – these are the main sources of Ildefonso Aguilar‘s inspiration. On a broken piano he sets his observations, his impressions, his feelings into music. While he sits at this instrument, you can actually see how he listens to nature, picks up short sequences and puts them into music.

“In my pictures it is about expressing something fundamental and this I can achieve with various approaches: by going macroscopically close to the elements or by seeing them at an infinite zoom at the horizon or by a synthesis of both points of view. It is clear that my pictures often have a certain tendency to become abstract.“ Through his travels to Iceland the multimedia artist is now also inspired by the nature of the largest Volcanic island on earth, which has much in common with his home. He finds inspiration in the specific nature of the islands of Lanzarote and Iceland.

It was such a pleasure to interview Ildefonso at his stunningly beautiful studio in Tahiche in Lanzarote