From Cesar Manrique in Lanzarote to Jørn Utzon in Mallorca, there is something about modernist architects finding their muse on the windswept, often rocky shores of an island. For German-born artist and architect, Erwin Broner (1898-1971), that island was Ibiza, where he would first arrive for a brief time in 1933, returning nearly 20 years later to spend the rest of life building his most recognised work, Casa Broner.
Erwin Broner came of age in the 1920s and early 1930s in Germany, where he was a part of the important artistic and cultural movements of the time. He studied fine art, meeting and studying with Hans Hofmann in Munich and Oskar Kokoschka in Dresden, both of whom would have an important influence on his work. He then went on to study architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, between 1928-1931.
Broner had established himself as a respected architect and artist, but it was Ibiza where his expression was fully realized. Set up on a cliff overlooking the sea on the border of the Sa Marina and Sa Penya neighborhoods, the simple, two-level Casa Broner (1960) is in some ways a culmination of his previous encounters and studies, and a beautiful example of what contemporary architecture signified in 1960
Broner built several private homes in Ibiza, but Casa Broner is the best example of his creativity. It was willed to the government of Ibiza in 2005 by his widow Gisela, who continued to live in the house after his death in 1971. Since 2010, the Museum of Contemporary Art has maintained the house, which is open to visitors and occasionally hosts exhibitions of his artwork and objects. In 2023, the museum will host a series of events to mark the 125th anniversary of Broner’s birth, an opportunity, as Ruiz Sastre says, “to honour an artist who greatly contributed to and supported the cultural patrimony of Ibiza”.
