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-hand 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 engravings, 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 for Velázquez, with the full perspective of Las Meninas on a grey background, and the second for Rothko, with a large lilac-coloured mass and a kind of affectionate greeting. The third, dedicated to Van Gogh, is of a yellow colour broken by undulations that remind us of the fields of flowers he painted. To Picasso he dedicates a green square with a set of signs and lines like various questions, while the engraving dedicated to Mondrian is a sober, geometric and luminous white. To Bonnard, he offers an orange surface, bright and inhabited, and to Matisse, a joyful dance in crimson. In memory of Torres García, he draws the static peace of a structure on a light blue background. In memory of Braque, an agglomeration of signs, structured behind a white square on an ochre background and, in memory of Léger, a geometric composition of elements on top of red stripes, while the engraving dedicated to Miró is very subtle blue.
A painter, teacher, writer and graphic artist, Ràfols Casamada enjoys great international prestige today. He began in the world of drawing and painting with his father, Albert Ràfols Cullerés. In 1942 he began studying architecture, although he soon abandoned it to devote himself to the plastic arts. His father's post-impressionist influence and his particular cézannism mark the works presented in his first exhibition, held in 1946 at the Pictòria galleries in Barcelona, where he exhibited with the group Els Vuit. Subsequently, he gradually developed a poetic abstraction, amorphous in its configuration, free and intelligent, the fruit of a slow gestation and based on atmospheres, themes, objects or graphics from everyday life. Ràfols Casamada worked with these fragments of reality, of life, in a process of disfigurement, playing with connotations, plastic values and the visual richness of the possible different readings, in an attempt to fix the transience of reality. In 1950 he obtained a grant to travel to France, and settled in Paris until 1954. There he became acquainted with post-Cubist figurative painting, as well as with the work of Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Miró, among others. These influences were combined in his painting with that of American abstract expressionism, which was developing at the same time. When he finally returned to Barcelona he embarked on his own artistic path, with a style characterised by compositional elegance, based on orthogonal structures combined with an emotive and luminous chromaticism. After showing an interesting relationship, in the sixties and seventies, with neo-Dada and new realism, his work has focused on purely pictorial values: fields of colour in expressive harmony on which gestural charcoal lines stand out. He has received many awards, such as the National Plastic Arts Award from the Ministry of Culture in 1980, the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1982 and the CEOE Prize for the Arts in 1991. In 1985 he was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, and is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. In 2003 the Generalitat awarded him the National Visual Arts Prize of Catalonia, and in 2009, just two months before his death, Grup 62 paid tribute to him at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. His work can be found in the most important museums all over the world.