Rafael Zabaleta

RAFAEL ZABALETA FUENTES (Quesada, Jaén, 1907-1960).
"Night of cats", 1958.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 100 x 81 cm; 124 x 105 cm (frame).
Work exhibited in:
- Madrid, Dirección General de Bellas Artes, Rafael Zabaleta, 1959, n. 14, illustrated in the catalog.
- Venice, XXX Biennale di Venezia, 1960.
- Madrid, Urbis Club, 1961, n. 6.
Work published in:
-AUTOMÓVIL CLUB BRITÁNICO. VV., R. Zabaleta , Madrid, 1961, illustrated.
-Juan Eduardo Cirlot, El arte del siglo XX, vol. II, illustrated p. 523.
-María Guzmán Pérez, Catalogación de la producción artística Zabaletiana , Granada, 1983, n. 420, pp. 721-722.
-María Guzmán Pérez, The painting of Rafael Zabaleta, Granada, 1983, p. 410.
-María Guzmán Pérez, Rafael Zabaleta. Catalographic study. Óleos y acuarelas , ed. Diputación de Jaén, 2010, n. 428, p. 388, not illustrated.
One of the three known oil paintings by the artist in which cats are the protagonists, "Nocturno de los gatos" shows Zabaleta's debt to the Picasso tradition. The chromatic and formal decomposition and the triangular arrangement of the felines form a bold mathematical symmetry that achieves a balance characteristic of the artist's works.
Born into a well-to-do family, Rafael Zabaleta showed his love for painting as a child, so after finishing his high school studies he moved to Madrid and entered the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in 1925. There he will have as teachers Lainez Alcalá, Cecilio Pla and Ignacio Pinazo, and in 1932 he participates for the first time in a group exhibition, that of the students of San Fernando. One of his works, entitled "La pareja," was selected to illustrate the critical review that Manuel Abril made for the magazine "Blanco y Negro". Three years later Zabaleta made his first trip to Paris, where he met and studied the works of the masters of contemporary painting. In 1937 he was appointed delegate of the National Artistic Treasure, and also around this time he began a series of drawings on the Civil War. At the end of the war he was denounced, and briefly spent time in the concentration camp of Higuera de Calatrava and in Jaen prison, where his two albums of drawings made during the war were seized. Finally released, in 1940 he settles in Madrid, where he attends the gatherings at the Café Gijón and draws and paints at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. Two years later he visits Aurelio Biosca, director of the Madrid gallery Biosca, with a letter of introduction from the sculptor Manolo Hugué. There he held his first individual exhibition that same year, after being rejected at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. However, the following year he participates in the First Salón de los Once and becomes a member of the Academia Breve de Crítica de Arte de Eugenio d'Ors, to which Biosca also belonged. Zabaleta will take part in most of his Salones de los Once and anthological exhibitions. In 1945 Zabaleta participates in the group show "Floreros y bodegones" held at the National Museum of Modern Art, while he continues to exhibit individually and collectively in galleries of the capital. In 1947 he holds his first personal exhibition in Barcelona, at the Argos Gallery, and his first monograph is published. Two years later he travels again to Paris, coming into contact with Picasso, Óscar Domínguez, M. Ángeles Ortiz and others. The year of his definitive consecration will be 1951, when he holds a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid. In 1955 he obtained the UNESCO Prize at the Hispano-American Biennial in Barcelona. That same year he participates in the Biennial of the Mediterranean held in Alexandria, and holds a solo exhibition in Bilbao. During his last years Zabaleta will be an artist already fully recognized, invited to the most important exhibitions and salons both in Spain and in foreign cities of the importance of Paris. The most important collection of his work is in the Zabaleta Museum of Quesada, although it is also present in the most prestigious museums of the world, in cities such as Buenos Aires, New York or Tokyo.