Rafael Forteza

RAFAEL FORTEZA (Palma de Mallorca, 1955).
"Chances", 1990, Palma.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner. Signed, dated, titled and located on the back.
Measurements: 146 x 114 cm.

Rafa Forteza starts in the art world at the beginning of the eighties, after finishing his artistic studies at the University of Barcelona in 1983, in a context derived from the tension of multiple anti-art movements, derived from Beuys, Duchamp and Warhol. Thus, he starts from a free, ironic and subversive eclecticism, and at the same time he is heir to the gestural and informalist Spanish and German tradition of the second half of the twentieth century. Painter, engraver and sculptor, Rafa Forteza is today considered one of the most revealing creators of contemporary Spanish plastic art. Although he had already made his individual debut at the end of the seventies, it was in 1982 when he held his first important personal exhibition, at the 4 Gats gallery in Palma. That same year he was a finalist in the Biennial of Barcelona, and around this time he started engraving with Tristan Barbarà, making monumental engravings that were acquired by the MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the MNCARS in Madrid. Also in the eighties he began to participate in fairs such as ARCO, Art Basel or Art Cologne, where he regularly attends until today. In the early nineties he moved first to France and later to Germany, and in 2002 he held his first retrospective exhibition at the Casal Solleric Art Center in Palma. Rafa Forteza has won several national and international awards, including the Miró Foundation prize, which he has won on several occasions, and the International Bibliophilia Prize of the city of Leipzig (1993), and has held solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain and Russia, as well as participating in major group exhibitions and international competitions in Europe and the United States. His works are currently held in the MoMA in New York, the Centro Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Calcografía Nacional in Madrid, the Es Baluard Museum in Palma, the Museum of Modern Art in Ceret, the Postal and Telegraphic Museum in Madrid, the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation in Paris, the La Caixa, Ono and Deutsche Bank collections, the AENA, Joan Brossa and Pilar i Joan Miró Foundations, various Spanish universities and town halls, and other important collections.