Background

Zabaleta was born in Quesada, Spain, on November 6, 1907, into a well-off family.

Education

In 1925 Rafael Zabaleta went to Madrid to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. There he befriended Modesto Ciruelos, a prominent Spanish painter of the twentieth century. He graduated from the academy in 1927.

Career

Zabaleta became a delegate of the National Artistic Treasury in 1927. When the Spanish Civil War was over, charges were brought against him and he spent a short period of time at a jail in Jaén. At this time, a series of drawings, which he began three years earlier, about the Civil War were seized.

Starting from 1940, Rafael Zabaleta started a new stage of his life as well as painting. His artworks became more original and less influenced by academic painting. Country and mountain themes were among the most prominent in his works. The artist went to Paris. During his travel, he had a chance to meet Picasso and other relevant Spanish painters of the time. In 1960 Zabaleta exhibited a series of 16 oil paintings and ten drawings at the Spanish pavilion in the Venice Biennale. It was his most important exhibition.

Rafael Zabaleta made illustrations for El solitario y los sueños de Quesada by Camilo José Cela , as well as the Galician translation of La familia de Pascual Duarte by the same author.

His style varied from Expressionism, in its early career, to Postcubism under the influence of Picasso, since 1950.

Achievements

• Rafael Zabaleta was one of the most outstanding Spanish artists of the 20th century. The most important collection of his works is now at the Zabaleta Museum, in his hometown. Currently his paintings are exhibited in the most prestigious museums of the world in such places as Buenos Aires, New York, Tokyo, Spain, etc.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Female nude

  • Peasant family

  • Family of puppeteers

  • Female nude

  • National Museum of Archaeology

  • The three graces

  • Women in countryside

  • Drawing sideboard (tavern window)

  • The camp gate

  • Two woman and self-portrait bust

  • Landscape and Fique Vault

  • Female nude from back with stove

  • Puppeteer in the town square

  • Surrealistic dream

  • Girl with still life

  • Two seated women

  • Portrait of seated brunette

  • Portrait of Aunt Pepa

  • Harlequin and clown with mask

  • Museum garden

  • Reclining female nude

  • Tiscar Pilgrimage

  • Painter and reclining model

  • Maternity

  • Bathers on the beach under umbrella

  • Farmers in the garden

  • Interior with nude

  • A Kiss

  • Boy sitting with a hen on his lap

  • Model and painter with easel

  • Landscape with artist's farmhouse in Fique

  • Female nude

  • Seated female nude and artist's self-portrait

  • Gleaners

  • Partridges

  • Tiscar rosemary

  • Interior with nude

  • The Quesada Garden

  • Portrait of seated blonde woman

  • Still life, table figs, jar, bottle of anise

  • Model and two painters sitting

  • Portrait of two girls

  • Quesada Cemetery

  • Painters and Model

  • The Satyr

  • Seated boy

  • Self-portrait

  • Nude Woman

  • Fique Landscape

  • The old woman and the girl

  • Reapers in the age and Ceres

  • Point Frame

  • Seated boy

  • Boy with chicken

  • Portrait of girl sitting

  • Sideboard

  • Bathers on the beach in Santander

  • Garden of Quesada in winter

  • Peasants

  • Self-portrait with model and the still life

  • Three nude women

  • The threshing

  • Hunters

  • Female nude

  • Girl sitting and boy with hat standing

  • Gladiators

References

• El solitario Spanish Edition.
  1963