Rafael Zabaleta

RAFAEL ZABALETA FUENTES (Quesada, Jaén, 1907 - 1960).
"Still life of the fruit vendor", 1941.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
This work appears in a photograph of Cesáreo Rodríguez-Aguilera (friend and biographer of Zabaleta) taken in his house in Barcelona.
Work verified by the Zabaleta Museum.
Work referenced in Rafael Zabaleta's autographic relation where it is even indicated to whom it is sold.
Exhibitions:
- Biosca, Madrid, 1942, number 1.
- Argos, Barcelona, 1947, number 12.
Bibliography:
- Guzmán, M. "Catalogación...", n. 78, pp. 107-108.
- Guzmán, M. "La pintura de R. Zabaleta", p. 304.
Measurements: 50 x 61 cm; 70 x 81 cm (frame).

Rafael Zabaleta was an extremely versatile painter, capable of developing in parallel a work of cubist heritage in which the image is fragmented evoking colorful stained glass windows and, at the same time, an apparently traditional style but in which the avant-garde legacy can be appreciated. This second case occurs in the painting we are bidding for, of which María Guzmán Pérez, the greatest expert in Zabaleta's pictorial work, states that "it lacks all perspective, whose superimposed objects totally cover the pictorial space. The primary scheme is built by an oval and a rhombus, making the axes of both coincide. The drawing is very simple, the forms being insinuated by a dark line that draws them, with no other purpose than to make them recognizable".
Born into a well-to-do family, Rafael Zabaleta showed his love for painting as a child, so after finishing his high school studies he moved to Madrid and entered, in 1925, the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. There he will have as teachers Lainez Alcalá, Cecilio Pla and Ignacio Pinazo, and in 1932 he participates for the first time in a group exhibition, that of the students of San Fernando. One of his works, entitled "La pareja," was selected to illustrate the critical review that Manuel Abril made for the magazine "Blanco y Negro". Three years later Zabaleta made his first trip to Paris, where he met and studied the works of the masters of contemporary painting. In 1937 he was appointed delegate of the National Artistic Treasure, and also around this time he began a series of drawings on the Civil War. At the end of the war he was denounced, and briefly spent time in the concentration camp of Higuera de Calatrava and in Jaen prison, where his two albums of drawings made during the war were seized. Finally freed, in 1940 he settles in Madrid, where he attends the gatherings at the Café Gijón and draws and paints at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. Two years later he visits Aurelio Biosca, director of the Madrid gallery Biosca, with a letter of introduction from the sculptor Manolo Hugué. There he held his first individual exhibition that same year, after being rejected at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. However, the following year he participates in the First Salón de los Once and becomes a member of the Academia Breve de Crítica de Arte de Eugenio d'Ors, to which Biosca also belonged. Zabaleta will take part in most of his Salones de los Once and anthological exhibitions. In 1945 Zabaleta participates in the group show "Floreros y bodegones" held at the National Museum of Modern Art, while he continues to exhibit individually and collectively in galleries in the capital. In 1947 he holds his first personal exhibition in Barcelona, at the Argos Gallery, and his first monograph is published. Two years later he travels again to Paris, coming into contact with Picasso, Óscar Domínguez, M. Ángeles Ortiz and others. The year of his definitive consecration will be 1951, when he holds a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid. In 1955 he was awarded the UNESCO Prize at the Hispano-American Biennial in Barcelona. That same year he participates in the Biennial of the Mediterranean held in Alexandria, and holds a solo exhibition in Bilbao. During his last years Zabaleta will be an artist already fully recognized, invited to the most important exhibitions and salons both in Spain and in foreign cities of the importance of Paris.