Albert Ràfols Casamada

ALBERT RÀFOLS CASAMADA (Barcelona, 1923–2009).
"Number 1" from the series "Policromia o a la galeria dels miralls," 1998.
Pastel and charcoal on Galgo paper.
Signed and numbered in the lower right corner.
Provenance: Private collection.
Measurements: 29.5 x 21 cm.
"Policromia o la galería de los espejos," dated 1998, is a series consisting of twelve prints, twelve poems, and twelve texts dedicated to the twelve painters who have had the greatest significance in the life and work of Albert Ràfols Casamada. The first is dedicated to Velázquez, featuring the entire perspective of *Las Meninas* against a gray background, and the second to Rothko, with a large mass of lilac color and a sort of affectionate greeting. The third, dedicated to Van Gogh, is yellow, broken up by undulating lines that remind us of the fields of flowers he painted. He dedicates a green square to Picasso, featuring a set of symbols and lines that resemble various question marks, while the print dedicated to Mondrian is a sober, geometric, and luminous white. For Bonnard, he offers a bright, vibrant, and lively orange surface, and for Matisse, a joyful dance of carmine color. In memory of Torres García, he depicts the static peace of a structure against a light blue background. For Braque, he creates a cluster of symbols, structured behind a white square on an ochre background; in memory of Léger, a geometric composition of elements set against red stripes; while the engraving dedicated to Miró is a very subtle shade of blue.
A painter, educator, writer, and graphic artist, Ràfols Casamada enjoys great international prestige today. He began his journey into the world of drawing and painting alongside his father, Albert Ràfols Cullerés. In 1942, he began studying architecture, though he soon abandoned those studies to devote himself to the visual arts. His father’s Post-Impressionist influence and his own distinctive Cézannian style shaped the works presented at his first exhibition, held in 1946 at the Pictòria galleries in Barcelona, where he exhibited with the group Els Vuit. Later, he would develop a poetic abstraction—amorphous in form, free, and intelligent—the result of a slow creative process and drawing on environments, themes, objects, or graphic elements from everyday life. Ràfols Casamada works with these fragments of reality and life through a process of distortion, playing with connotations, artistic values, and the visual richness of their various possible interpretations, in an attempt to capture the fleeting nature of reality. In 1950, he received a scholarship to travel to France and settled in Paris until 1954. There he was introduced to post-Cubist figurative painting, as well as the work of Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Miró, among others. These influences merged in his painting with those of American Abstract Expressionism, which was developing at that very moment. When he finally returned to Barcelona, he embarked on his own artistic path, with a style characterized by compositional elegance, based on orthogonal structures combined with an emotive and luminous color palette. After exploring an interesting relationship with Neo-Dada and New Realism in the 1960s and 1970s, his work has focused on purely pictorial values: fields of color in expressive harmony against which gestural charcoal lines stand out. He has received numerous awards, including the National Prize for Visual Arts from the Ministry of Culture in 1980, the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1982, and the CEOE Arts Prize in 1991. In 1985, he was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, and he is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. In 2003, the Generalitat awarded him the National Prize for Visual Arts of Catalonia, and in 2009, just two months before his death, Grup 62 paid tribute to him at the National Art Museum of Catalonia. His work is held in major museums around the world.