Manuel Santos Panitz
Born in New York on September the 10th 1927, the only child of Manuel Santos, pharmacist by profession originally from Puerto Rico, and of German-born Frida Panitz, he grew up in Spanish and Italian-speaking neighbourhoods of the Upper West and Upper East sides of Manhattan.
He graduated from the High School of Music and Art in 1945. In 1946 he entered 18 months of military service. During his last 7 months in the Army Medical Corps, he was stationed at West Point´s Military Academy Hospital, where he worked as a laboratory technician.
Upon release, he studied advertising design for 3 years at New York´s Parsons School of Design, receiving his art diploma in 1950. Graduation from Parsons was followed by his taking the school´s 3-month European post-graduate summer course in gouache painting in France and Italy. The program included visits to museums, palaces and chateaux, Parisian couturiers and to private homes distinguished by the design of their interiors. The first 1½ months were spent in Paris.
The group of approximately 40 students then regrouped in Milan, travelling to Padua, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples. Upon his return to New York in October, 1950, he completed academic study requirements to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree in Advertising Design from New York University, offered in conjunction with Parsons. This he obtained in 1952.
In 1953, he began working in New York as a freelance artist. In 1954, he was employed by Rinehart book publishers. Then, by New York radio station W O R , affiliated with R K O Pictures; and finally, by Lord & Taylor, as layont artist for the 5th Avenue department store.
In 1959, he left the security and opportunities of full-time employment with Lord & Taylor, choosing Italy for the pursuit of his painting, and selecting Rome in which to settle for one year. Upon his return to New York, Lord & Taylor offered him the freelance job of preparing its 1961 Christmas Catalogue. He then returned to Europe to study oil painting with French artist, Yves Brayer, at the Parisian art academy, La Grande Chaumière. After 8 months in Paris, he came back to New York to prepare Lord & Taylor´s 1962 Christmas Catalogue.
In 1961, his family acquired a large, old property called Ca´n Verdera, in Fornalutx, on the island of Majorca . In 1963, he displaced himself to the mountain village to direct the two-year reconstruction of the abandoned house, and restoration of its orchard terraces and rain-water reservoir, constructed by the Moors . He has lived on the island ever since.
His father died in New York in October of 1965, and his mother died in Fornalutx in October of 1972. In 1990 he sold Ca´n Verdera. Since 1991, he has lived in the neighboring town of Sóller.
His distinctive style as a figurative painter has evolved to include in the course of time new forms of expression. In spite of extensive activity and recognized talent, he has only held 3 exhibitions; the first and second, at Sóller´s Casal de Cultura in 1974 and 1977; and the third, in 1982, in the Swiss lakeside village of Hermance, near Geneva. At present he is working on the preparation of his fourth exhibition.