Rafael Alberti

RAFAEL ALBERTI (El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz, 1902 - 1999).
Untitled, 1947.
Ink on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower area.
Measurements: 47 x 39 cm; 83 x 74 cm (frame).
Rafael Alberti was a writer and poet belonging to the Generation of 27, considered one of the greatest writers of the so-called Silver Age of Spanish literature. He received numerous awards and recognitions, among them the National Poetry Prize (1925), the Lenin de la Paz (1965), the National Theater Prize (1980), the Cervantes Prize (1983) and the Rome Prize for Literature (1991). He renounced the other great award of Spanish literature, the Prince of Asturias, due to his strong republican convictions. Rafael Alberti's first vocation was painting, but his real discovery of this art took place in 1917, when he moved to Madrid with his family and visited the Prado Museum for the first time. He then made his plastic work known for the first time in 1920, at the Salón de Otoño in Madrid, and two years later he exhibited at the Athenaeum in the same city. His painting was characterized by the fact that it was not his definitive path, since after the death of his father, he began to write his first verses. As a writer, Alberti enjoyed great success from the beginning of his career, however, at first, his success was linked to artistic prestige, since he was still economically dependent on his family. The new literary magazines accepted and wanted to publish his works. He was also beginning to make friends within the circle that today is known as the Generation of 27. He began to write in a style that was not only more demanding formally, but also allowed him to be more satirical and dramatic. Since then, his life will be opening to what will be the center of his inspiration, poetry, without completely abandoning his pictorial vocation. Among his last works is A la pintura ('On Painting') (1945). They reflect his intellectual activity during his exile, since Alberti returned to painting and began a series of poems to gather his thoughts on painting. A subject to which he continued to devote himself for many years. Among these poems dedicated to painting he wrote a series of sonnets about the retina, the hand, the canvas, the brush, etc.; a series of short poems in free verse about colors; and finally a series of poems in homage to various painters such as Titian, or El Greco among others.