Rafa Forteza

RAFA FORTEZA (Palma de Mallorca, 1955).
Untitled.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 31 x 35 cm.

Rafa Forteza studied at the University of Barcelona, and in 1982 he held his first major solo exhibition at the 4 Gats gallery in Palma. That same year, he was a finalist at the Barcelona Biennial, and around this time he began working in printmaking under the guidance of Tristan Barbarà, creating monumental prints that would be acquired by MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the MNCARS in Madrid. Also in the 1980s, he began participating in art fairs such as ARCO, Art Basel, and Art Cologne, which he continues to attend regularly to this day. In the early 1990s, 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 received prestigious national and international awards, including the Miró Foundation Award, which he has won on several occasions, and the International Bibliophilia Prize from 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, in addition to participating in prominent group exhibitions and international competitions in Europe and the United States. His works are currently held in the collections of MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofía National Art Center, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Engraving Museum in Madrid, the Es Baluard Museum in Palma, the Museum of Modern Art in Céret, the Postal and Telegraph 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 city councils, and other major collections.