Mercedes Ruibal

MERCEDES RUIBAL (Xeve, Pontevedra, 1928–2003).
“The Woman and Her Shadow,” 1990.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, dated, and titled on the reverse.
Measurements: 35 x 27 cm; 41 x 33 cm (frame).

Born into a family of artists—her mother worked in a naïve style—both her brother (the playwright José Ruibal from Santiago de Compostela) and her sister and father were also involved in the arts; in fact, Mercedes Ruibal married Agustín Pérez Bellas, who was also a painter and playwright. A student of the Galician painter Laxeiro, with whom she trained during her time in Buenos Aires, Ruibal’s painting falls within the artistic movement known as “new figuration,” a movement of the 1960s that broke with the Informalism of the preceding era and proposed a figurative-based style of painting better suited to conveying political and social messages. It was in Buenos Aires that she held her first exhibition; the following year, she returned to her native Galicia and later moved to Madrid, where she continued her training, captivated by the atmosphere that prevailed in postwar Madrid at the time. Ruibal’s style is characterized by its archaic and naïve primitivism, with forms leaning toward expressionism, which are rooted in the more dreamlike and surrealist ideas found in the work of her husband, Pérez Bellas. At first, Ruibal worked on themes of childhood and motherhood; however, her style would evolve toward more complex compositions, ranging from victims of the Vietnam and Bosnian wars to bullfighting scenes and figures from Classical Greece. Ruibal’s fame led her to exhibit not only within the Galician and Madrid art scenes but also beyond national borders, exhibiting in Florence and Rome, among many other European cities.