Rafael Zabaleta

RAFAEL ZABALETA FUENTES (Quesada, Jaén, 1907-1960).
"Three figures and still life/ Peasant family", 1949.
Oil on canvas.
Work reproduced in María Guzmán Pérez, Catalographic study. Oil and watercolors. Inst. de Estudios Giennenses, 2011, p. 474, nº 236.
Presents informative labels on the back of gallery (Barcelona).
Provenance: Private collection, Madrid.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 81 x 100 cm; 112 x 130 cm (frame).
Exhibitions:
National Museum of Modern Art, Madrid, 1951, number 58.
Syra, Barcelona, 1952, number 11.
Museo del Parque, Bilbao, 1955, number 13. Adriá, Barcelona, 1971, number 38.
Roca, Madrid, 1972, number 5 (reproduced in Roca calendar).
Biosca, Madrid, 1975.
Layetanas, Barcelona, 1976, number 10.
Collective, Durán, Madrid, 1976.
Bibliography:
Ayuntamiento de Quesada, Programa Fiestas,
1965 (reproduced).
CHAVARRI, R., R. Zabaleta. Slide series
M.E.C., number 23.
DEL CASTILLO, A., "Exhibition Zabaleta..." (reproduced).
GUZMÁN, M., Cataloguing..., number 231, pages 363-367.
GUZMÁN, M., "El legado artístico de Zabaleta", pages 8-10 and reproduced.
GUZMÁN, M., La pintura de R. Zabaleta, pages 158-159 and reproduced.
GUZMÁN, M., "Zabaleta in perspective," page 193 and reproduced.
LOZANO, M., "El Lorca de la Alta Andalucía>> (reproduced).
RODRÍGUEZ, C., "La pintura de..." (reproduced).
475.

As Zabaleta's catalog raisonné points out, this work "represents a three-member family of fair-goers or the same popular nucleus dressed for the occasion and in a fairground setting, as shown by all the elements surrounding them. They are located at the back of a small stall of sweets with a great variety and in a rigorous frontal position. Behind them, as a decoration, there are three wide vertical stripes with the national colors, in the center of which a cardboard tray is glued and at the ends two cockades, although on the left side there is a paper grinder. He composes the painting in axial symmetry and uses the rectangle as a geometrical base, which he distributes with perfect balance on the canvas in a number of four, within which he inscribes the different elements of which it is composed. A very simple drawing, which disregards small details in function of the amplitude of the volumes, sustains the work. It is toned on the basis of trichromy, with strong hallmarks of whole tones, bringing blue closer to orange or violet to yellow, not in the impressionist way, but in large planes that are juxtaposed. He paints the whole painting with a great saving of shades, each element is resolved with a general color and another of the same chromatic lineage models the interior forms. The painting completely lacks aerial perspective, as for the linear, only insinuates it in some loose elements, in the still life and the child's hat. The characters are hieratic and inexpressive, placed frontally and without any connection between them. They are there, they cover a pictorial surface and interpret the given plastic function. A very representative work of the painter from Quesada, already close to the fifties, which can be linked to a Fauvist expressionism and in which some connotations of naive painting can be perceived. It is one of Zabaletian canvases most moved by exhibitions. It has appeared with different names and varied dates, in terms of its chronological precision. Thus, Family of peasants, Peasants with a stall, Peasants at the fair, etc. In the catalog of the Sala Roca, it is specified as 1958; in Adria as 1955, and so on. It really corresponds to the production of 1949, titled "Tres figuras y bodegón" (Three Figures and Still Life).
Born into a well-to-do family, Rafael Zabaleta showed his love for painting since he was a child, so after finishing his high school studies he moved to Madrid and entered, in 1925, the San Fernando School of Fine Arts. 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 in 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.