Rafael Úbeda

RAFAEL ÚBEDA PIÑEIRO (Pontevedra, 1932).
"Ría de Marín".
Oil on táblex.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 39 x 27 cm; 47 x 37,5 cm (frame).

Rafael Úbeda Piñeiro began to study easel painting, murals and engravings during his degree, which he studied in Spain. In 1956 he moved to Madrid, where he studied Fine Arts at the San Fernando School, where he excelled and won a scholarship to El Paular as a landscape painter. At the same time he followed courses at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Gráficas. Between 1963 and 1964 he attended courses at the Hoger Akademy St. Joosta in Breda (Netherlands), and in Maarsen, in the same country, he studied the intaglio techniques of Hercules Seghers, together with Professor Willen van Leusden. In 1965 he won the grand prize for painting in Rome, and resided in that city for four years, during his constructive landscape painting period. In 1967 he was selected in Milan to paint a large mural in the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth (Galilee). Upon his return to Spain, exhibitions were held throughout the state, and he made new murals on the Island of La Toxa (O Grove) and in the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Miracles of Amil (Moraña) (1978). He competed in engraving contests, a technique in which he excelled. In the United States he was very well received, and returned there in 1992, invited by the city of Chicago (Illinois), as the only Spanish artist, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the installation of a large sculpture of Picasso in the city. He taught at secondary schools in Pontevedra, the Canary Islands and Madrid; Professor of Painting at the San Jorge School of Fine Arts; Perspective at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid; Drawing and Engraving at the Tenerife School of Fine Arts; Drawing at the National School of Graphic Arts in Barcelona, and Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Pontevedra, since its beginnings. He also taught in France. His work can be found in the collections of the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra, in the Contemporary Art of Madrid; Managua; Heildelgerg; Carlos Maside Museum in Sada, A Coruña; Huesca; Museo do Pobo Galego, in Compostela; Utrecht; Aurich; Norden; Academia de San Fernando, in Madrid, and in numerous public institutions.Rafael Úbeda was a multiform artist. He began in a "fauve" tendency of landscape painting. Later, during his stay in Italy, he moved towards a structural geometry, with a cubist base and very warm chromatism, with dominant reds, to finally reach his current stage, completely expressionist, with ironic roots and with the same geometric structure.