Exept for a few interruptions, Rolf Schaffner has lived and worked in Mallorca since 1962 – away from the art world, tourism and the hectic insider scene. Why does a a young artist, just starting his career, make such a decision and abide by it?

First of all, to the young artist there was the fascination of the natural stones in various hues of yellow, being abundant at his artistic disposal in the vicinity of Santanyi. Here, he could realize those ambitious sculpture projects he could only have dreamed of in Germany. Here, he wanted to combine living and working in a very special way. For himself and his family, Schaffner seemed to have discovered a paradise. The cost of living on Mallorca was low, nature presented herself bounteously and thus Schaffner channelled all his creative power into the process of being an artist at work.
Without any special assignment, he created impressive, enormous sculptures of piled-up natural stone- blocks, in a way resembling those boundary walls between fields erected by the local farmers. Very soon, he was publicly noticed, received his first assignments and awards.

This promising start, however, wasn’t followed by an equally promising career as being Mallorca’s prominent and celebrated artist. Schaffner wanted to remain master of his own decisions. His unusual perceptiveness, his critical mind, and his belief in freedom and a self-determined life, made him finally leave the island for more than 1o years in order to earn his living back in Munich. In 1986, he returned to Santanyi. “His” island, however, had changed. Mallorca had turned into a favourite destination of mass tourism, new hotels had been built everywhere, entertainment centres and golf courses as well, with more being planned. The underground water had become oversalted, making the once exuberantly growing vegetation slowly die off. Schaffner’s reaction to this development were critical sculpture projects: “Five to Twelve” in 1990 and “Witnesses along the Road” in 1994. However, his perhaps biggest project against zeitgeist and human irresponsibility, he started in 1995: the international sculpture project “Equilibrio”. With this project Schaffner leaves the boundaries of his island and meets up with the meridian pattern of the earth. Ever since 1994, Nora Braun supports and promotes the work of the artist Rolf Schaffner.