Ràfols-Casamada, a painter, draughtsman and art teacher, decided to abandon his architectural studies to devote himself to painting. In the 1950s, with the aid of a scholarship, he went to Paris, where he made a close study of the great avant-garde artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Starting from a post-Cubist figurative style, he moved towards Informalismo and Neo-Dada, and then in the eighties he adopted a form of abstraction derived from American , especially that of Mark Rothko (1903-1970). It is very difficult to sum up his work, since it reflects an idea of art as an expressive need, and this makes him one of the pioneering painters and leading figures of

 Lyrical Abstraction 

A tendency that emerged within abstract painting in 1945 in France, as a reaction against the excessive coldness of

 Geometric Abstraction 

A term introduced in the 1920s to name a kind of abstract art based on scientific and mathematical principles. The main goal was to eliminate all subjectivity in favour of art based on the essence of geometric forms. Its main champions were Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Piet Mondrian (1872-1944).

and attempting to give more room to the expression of the artist’s emotions. The movement favoured colour over form through techniques like watercolour and oil paint, which would be the most widely used by its practitioners. Major sources of inspiration were the painting of Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and automatism in Surrealist painting. Key names within the movement are Pierre Soulages (1919), Georges Mathieu (1921-2012) and Hans Hartung (1904-1989).

in Spain.
 
The nature depicted in his works is artificial, totally removed from reality. Taking it instead as a reference, the artist created a world of his own which he was able to control at will.
 
After moving away from Informalismo, Ràfols-Casamada’s pictorial space became much denser, though his forms continue to remind us of the gesturalism and aesthetic of neo-expressionism. His painting gives off a sense of apparent serenity in which the lines and the planes are not architectural nor are used to create volumes. In fact, the composition is made up precisely of form and colour in delicate balance.
 
From the seventies onwards, his work began to engage with a heightened experimentation that would remain with him until the end. The aesthetics of his oil paintings is focused on conveying chromatic sensations in different areas. At the same time, the composition is schematic, based on divisions of vertical and horizontal rhythms without reneging on the equilibrium between colour and form by means of softer colouring and more agile, delicate brushwork.
 
The artist’s ultimate goal was, as he said himself, “to ensure that colour speaks and that it does so in its own language”.