20th Century Spanish

Although he initially started studying Architecture, Ràfols Casamada soon abandoned it to devote himself fulltime to painting. To this end, in 1945 he enrolled at Academia Tárrega in Barcelona. One year later he joined the Els Vuit group where he met his future wife María Girona (1923-2015). 

In 1950, thanks to a scholarship he was able to travel to Paris, where his career received a boost after meeting artists of the stature of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963) and Henri Matisse (1969-1954) as well as post-cubist figurative painting, a style that would be the foundation for his early work. In 1955 he returned to Barcelona and his painting entered into a process of abstraction that would continue until 1963.

The period from 1964 to 1977 is the time of his first collages. Besides, fully embracing the new trends coming from America, he gave colour the leading role, a tendency that ended up, in the 1980s, in the creation of multiple spaces organised exclusively by light and colour.

His activity also covered the creation of stained glass windows, stage designs, silkscreen prints and etchings. He was deeply interested in art pedagogy and founded the influential Spanish art school Elisava which he directed until 1967, the year when he created another school, Eina, focused on the cutting-edge trends of the time, of which he was also director until 1990.

His paintings are in public and private collections worldwide, including those of the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao and New York, Tate Gallery in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Likewise, Ràfols Casamada was also the recipient of countless distinctions, like the National Visual Arts Prize awarded by the Spanish Ministry for Culture in 1980. In 1985 the French Government appointed him Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2006 the Real Casa de la Moneda distinguished him with the Tomás Francisco Prieto Prize for his life’s work.