Rafael Lafuente
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HIS WORK
In the years – well over a decade now – since Lafuente´s work has become well known, what is most striking first and foremost is his use of geometrical forms in his work. Lafuente, who was born in Vitoria in 1937, shows us throughout all his work his belief in the strength of geometry in art, he was adept at ordering multiple spaces and a classical builder of real spaces that are unusually beautiful, resounding and solitary in the eyes of twentieth and twenty first century man. Let us now look at his work chronologically.
Phases
| 1. Expressionism and Fauvism in the early years | up |
From a young age (1954-58) Lafuente painted very strongly coloured figures that were dramatic and alone; isolated in their own markedly expressive destiny. He had started learning his art in the same way as most of his contemporaries – drawing still figures and nude models. The human body and its complex anatomy was by this time already a source of pleasure and construction for his eye and mind. From this period Lafuente kept folder upon folder of well ordered and carefully preserved work, and at this stage we see him as a strong and sturdy sketcher of the male and female anatomy.
We must not forget that at this time Lafuente was still working in the Vitoria Art & Design College as an art teacher of anatomy and live models. He made no secret of his situation, and at this time he took on board his circumstances clearly for all to see in terms of the method and subject matter of his work. In the end it all boils down to a question of perception of mass and volume, of tensional and dialectic positioning of space and colours. In this sense, although Lafuente taught himself, he always followed a perfectly clear path right from the beginning of his work and throughout his artistic career. He is not, therefore, an artist who has made great U-turns or jumps in terms of style, there have been no great ruptures with his past work, and no great artistic contradictions. His work moves ahead and progresses slowly, and is built on a firm base making it sturdier and more coherent than most, and he has, above all, a strong sense of conviction in his own work.
It is worth underlining these points right from the start, because the post-war Basque Arts scene, with its various unexpected changes of direction and the influence of new poetic arts and latest trends meant that some artists did not find the best path to follow in terms of their artistic direction.
In 1954, while still very young, Lafuente put forward his work in an art competition, and was awarded first prize for his entry of three separate lively portraits. By this stage he was working as a draughtsman for a graphic arts company, and was dedicating all his free time to painting.
His first individual exhibition was in 1958 in the Vitoria–Gasteiz Art Gallery. The cultural and artistic scene in Vitoria at that time was not particularly great or dynamic, as Lafuente himself commented, and the viewing public were somewhat confused and taken aback by his vitalistic expressionism.
Throughout this first stage of his artistic career, and until 1962, Lafuente continued his art on his own, putting onto canvas his characters in the classical resting poses, and these characteristic figures were later to become a constant feature of his paintings. His magnificent “Paisaje” of 1963, (“Landscape”), which was a work of quasi-material abstraction in red and ochre tones, and “Torero” (“Bullfighter”) of the same year, along with “Desnudo con flor” (“Nude with flower”) of the following year, these latter two being more ironical and expressionist, were his most interesting pieces of work of this stage of his career.
| 2. TOWARDS EXPRESSIVE ABSTRACTION | up |
In the same year, 1964, Lafuente starts leaning towards an expressive abstraction of biological and anatomical forms, and his painting becomes more elaborate and refined with “Ornamento de una mujer” (“Ornament of a woman”) and “Ornamento de un hombre” (“Ornament of a man”), both created in 1964, which were figures taken apart and analysed in terms of their own internal structure. Perhaps this was due to the influence of graphic illustration that Lafuente turned to after a period of personal crisis.
The world of ballet and the circus seem to stylise and bring to life the structure of the figures he paints and the whole paintings themselves. His 1965 works such as “Torso” (“Torso”), “Figura y ave” (“Figure and bird”), “Muchacha sujetando una flor” (“Girl holding a flower”), showed stylised figures in resting poses, drawn over neutral backgrounds, and were to lead on to later works such as “Figura conturbada” (“Perturbed figure”) of 1966, and “Personajes destruyéndose” (“People self-destructing”) of 1967, which were more gesticulative and active.
By the end of the 1960s Lafuente had begun to develop a certain biological organicism, using looping whip shaped whirls which give his work a greater degree of agility, as in his 1969 works “Figura flotando en su espacio” (“Figure floating in space”), “Pareja asomándose en un paisaje ritmico” (“Couple looking out on a rhythmic landscape”), and “Figuras sobrecogidas ante un crepusculo” (“Figures overcome by the twilight”). A certain paradigmatical relationship with Cuixart and Tarraths becomes evident in this set of work. His colours are more intense, and his red/pink figures are set on striped backgrounds that make the whole composition of his pictures more dynamic.
“Figuras acostadas en su paisaje” (“Figures lying in their landscape”) of 1969, which makes use of ochre hues is perhaps his most classic and serene piece of work, and could be said to be the pinnacle of this whole first Expressive Abstract phase, or phase of Abstract Expression if you prefer.
It is worth underlining that it is during this stage, in 1965 to be more exact, that Lafuente gave up his job in graphic arts design to dedicate himself fulltime to his painting.
| 3. HUMAN FIGURE DESIGN PAINTING | up |
It is a curious fact that Roland Barthes´s saying that in art nothing is bettered or hidden, but that rather it is superimposed and altered seems to encapsulate the thread that runs through Lafuente´s evolving artistic repertoire. The years that he spent in graphic design begin to bear their fruit in the guise of a subtle and stylised form of the refined human figure that turns into an outline of itself. This is pure analysis of the biological bodily reality to a truly magical extent - almost shadowplay.
Intelligence and rational thinking are applied directly to captivate the boundless outside reality. He no longer gives names to his paintings in the same way as he did before. By 1970, pinks, greens, violets and blues form his artistic compositions – pictures within pictures, with almost fluorescent backgrounds. This is one of his most powerful stages, full of vitality, beauty and excitement. It is almost imperative here to bear in mind the references to Zumeta, Amable Arias, and the Cobra group.
In 1971 he breaks up the human figure into white, at rest, in movement, and in athletic postures.
In his 1972 works, the human figure in motion is placed on geometrical backgrounds that acquire an ever greater dynamic force. The individualized human figure appears schematically modelled, with a degree of poetic pop-art, reduced iconically to the head, bust, and profile. Lafuente’s obsession with the human figure in all its aspects is plain to see, and most of his time and artistic endeavours have always been spent concerned with this. At this stage, and even in his most abstract stages in his artistic career, Lafuente is a great humanist – a man and artist who is concerned with the human condition, and how human beings fit into their urban city environments.
Another masterwork of this stage is his 1974 painting “El hombre urbano” (“Urban man”), a médium-sized, beautiful and sober composition in which the outline of a blue man appears immersed in an urban landscape. This painting exhibits great purity in terms of colours, forms, and symbols. This painting draws to a close a particularly fruitful and prolific stage that now turns into a particularly powerful geometric abstract phase.
| 4. POWERFUL YET REFINED GEOMETRICAL ABSTRACTION | up |
Lafuente´s mind is always on the move, cooking up new ideas, and in 1975 he makes a coherent yet risky step towards a repertoire based on a serious and rigorous Geometrical Abstraction.
Blue, red and black, along with orange, yellow, and pink combinations placed as rectangular forms are what Lafuente is to use up to the year 1978. This is when kinetic elements from other stages of his artistic career are to make their presence felt in his work.
Rafael Lafuente´s artistic eye is now refined, precise, exquisite, and vanguardian. His experimental and progressive art, always attentive to his experiences of the previous decade in terms of colour, form, rhythm and space, gradually creates an endless set of variations that are always fresh, precise, rigorous, and geometrical. The painting and paintwork of this rationalist from the province of Alava is anything but naïve simplicity, and it exhibits great wisdom. His influences can be seen to be artists like Mondrian, Malevich, and Albers at this stage.
Form has been analysed, studied, and pursued. Colour, exquisite, strong and untamed, has been investigated by virtue of the two dimensions that most of his works of art have been purposefully reduced to. In this way, colour has become the tangible part and real essence of his work. Tangible space, whether square or rhomboidal, has been perfectly measured. The underlying themes of this work are deliberation, restraint, and order; forming a type of Greek architecture that is full of lyrical emphasis.
This rational and intellectual work may at first sight strike one as somewhat cold, but it is bold. It is only the powerful and luxurious use of colour, so wisely chosen, that gives warmth to this many-layered work that draws on general and urban/industrial design features of the 1980s.
Lafuente first started to use rhomboidal spaces and oils on canvas in 1979, exhibiting great purity in terms of form and colour. His treatment of the outside surface of his paintings is painstaking. The paint itself thus becomes the true centre of attention – the paint is the painting, and the painting is a product of true pleasure and luxury. This art is painting for painting´s sake, the enjoyment of painting and the pleasure obtained from seeing the paintings merge into one. We need seek no particular explanation for this; Lafuente paints because he likes painting, and it makes him feel good both on a visual level and also within the inner depths of his soul.
The fact is that Lafuente was never in the least interested in painting for profit, nor in producing paintings for immediate consumption. From his point of view, the interest of his works resides in the fact that they are a form of intellectual and physical development. His work is a rich expression of his own self – of his own most intimate self, wherein lies the strength and richness of the cosmos.
| 5. COLOUR EXPLOSION | up |
From the beginning of the 90’s were shaken by a brusque change. What previously featured the saturation and opacity of painting now featured the trembling transparencies of water – color; instead od the hard edge which defined his forthright geometrical planes, stains, mixture and lack of definition now appeared.” Narrative nuances and aspects, achieved with a paintbrush, increased. Instead of the project as a previous decision, the work was inclined towards the acceptance of what they turned out to be, of their accidents, their discovered and the unexpected.
The stains of transparent colour acquired the control of the image, evanescent stains, as if the object and the spaces, the material as a whole, had returned into liquid and, in its new state, had called for the meticulous exploration of its profiles, its splashes and its transparencies. These water-colours also summonsed up a sense of conundrum, of a game involving the reconstruction of the materials to its solid state: to discover recognizable shapes amidst the clouds or, as Leonardo proposed, amidst the stain and splashes on the wall. Despite the fact that these water colours did not contain information about real matters, we sense the promising sensation to identify elements of reality in the stains and shapes, since in doing so we reconstruct a space close to us, a domestic space. This has a lot to do with the type of observation, the intensity and the wealth of the contemplation. Diderot gave instructions regarding on of Chardin’s paintings: “If you approach it, everything becomes blurred, it levels out and disappears; if you move away from it, everything is recreated and it appears again”. In these water-colours, the proposal could be the reverse: if you distance yourself from them, the image intended by the painter appears, always outlined by straight and trembling; light lines which map out and organized structure, normally symmetrical, absolutely abstract. If you approach it to such and extent that you lose sight of the work as a whole, figurative suggestions, figments of your imagination or perhaps the obscure inhabitants of a subsoil that Rafael Lafuente has for many years insisted on maintain hidden, will begin to appear.
What drove Rafael Lafuente towards this path? Without a doubt, the answer lay in the necessity to open up his painting to new horizons, since the “isolated place” that his workshop had been converted into during his lengthy period of working with geometry, threatened to become a prison which smothered other possibilities as regard his work. Currently feels sure that he wants to released, just like an escape valve in a pressurized receptacle, all of this energy that has previously been denied, provisionally censored, by way of the rule of normative art, rules which were self-imposed by the aesthetic approach of the artist.. And from this form this form, hitherto unheart-of elements in his painting, or to be more precise, elements that had not featured in his work since the closing stages of the sixties and the start of the seventies, appeared: stain, gesture, and texture.
All of this was framed within a visual concept which continued to be profoundly geometrical, although in this case it emphasized the impressionist value of the nuances
The result is magnificent, like a some of the extended panels in which the gesture of the paintbrush construct the pictorial fabric of the piece, or the works featuring vertical bands with minimal gestural interventions
The energy that Rafael Lafuente employed in transforming the image of himself, abandoning this geometry which constituted his identity, is framed within a deeply individualistic context: that of solitary creator confronted by his work, like the realitation of destiny. Rafael Lafuente has always been a painter who only admitted references in their own right. The changes in his method of working must have personal references, based on his own work.
An artist like Lafuente, who has always maintained his independence and his isolated personality before all other concepts – including the vanguard of the Basque School- has meticulously calculated the stages of his evolution. He has directed himself in the life with the idea of modern coherence, the logic of change: Between his geometrical works and these works that constitute the main body of these period, thre exist a type of vigilance of himself. He changed in order to remain essentially the same, to continue being the independent painter who opted for the difficult path, as regards geometry. In some of the most gestural paintings, there is an element of calculated self-betrayal, a bid to make his other “diabolical self”, who in actual fact had not struggled to reveal itself, but had in fact been invited by the painter, speak.
Rafael Lafuente situates the problem in terms of freedom: repeating the geometrical work is the true betrayal, in this instance self-betrayal. What he also wants to say is that the painter is obliged to change as to maintain his identity as an investigator. When this is divulged, by way of the change in style, it reasserts itself more as identity. The technical aspect of this change is not the most important element; on the contrary, it is merely an excuse so as to allude to a more profound change. The way in which he touches them or point out a specific detail, reveals a great sense of self-satisfaction. Perharps this way of caressing the paintings in the proud of knowledge that he produced them, is the only victory that the painter experience in his life time.