Rafael Ruiz Balerdi

Rafael Ruiz Balerdi. (San Sebastián, Basque Country, May 5, 1934 - Altea, Alicante, March 11, 1992) was a Spanish painter of abstract style.

Timeline

1936. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, his father volunteered for the Republican army. The mother, pregnant with her third child, José María, faced with the imminent entry of Franco's troops into San Sebastián, takes refuge with her sons Pedro and Rafael, first in Motrico and later in their hometown, Aizpuru Etxeberri, in Villafranca de Ordicia.

1950-55. He works at the Nerecán printing house (his father works at the stationery store of the same name) as an offset proofreader. He combines this work with attending the classes of the painter Cobreros at the School of Arts and Crafts. Classes at the Conservatory of Music.

1953. The TEU of San Sebastián, founded among others by Pedro Ruiz Balerdi and Alfredo Landa, begins its performances. Rafael collaborates sporadically, designing the sets. He competes for the first time in the XVI New Artists Contest of the Guipúzcoa Provincial Council. He befriends the painter Miguel Ángel Álvarez and begins to frequent his studio.

1954. She participates with Self-portrait II in the V Christmas Contest. Eduardo Chillida, a member of the jury, grants the vote to this painting alone.

1955. Through Miguel Ángel Álvarez Muro (Tolosa, 1927) he met Eduardo Chillida, whose studio he has frequented ever since. The great friendship established between the two will have an important impact on the immediate evolution of Balerdi's work. He participates in the XVII New Artists Contest with four works and wins the second prize. He settled in Madrid with a scholarship for the 1955-56 academic year and attended classes at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts and, later, at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. He begins his work of drawings and oil paintings on chairs. He very influenced by Goya.

1956. He knows Elena Azpitarte. In the summer he makes several spatialist mural paintings at the Labor University of Tarragona. Through Chillida, he meets Juan Huarte Beaumont, who buys three paintings from him. Since then she will have close friendships with him and he will patronize the painter for more than fifteen years. He begins his abstract work and makes his first trip to Paris.

1957. She obtains the first prize of the XVIII Contest of New Artists. He became friends with the painters José María Ortiz, Amable Arias, Elías Elorza, etc. She participates in cultural and political gatherings with them and with Elías Querejeta and Antonio Eceiza, as well as with Enrique Múgica and Luis Martín Santos.

1958. Obtain the Award of the Provincial Council of the VIII Christmas Contest. He participates in the young painters section of the XXIX Venice Biennale. New stay in Paris. Participates in the Pittsburgh International Exibition organized by the Carnegie Institute.

1959. Bertha Schaffer buys several paintings and drawings from him. Works of social realism. In December she participates in the Exposición de los Diez.

1960. Stay in Paris with José María Ortiz. There he frequented the painters Sistiaga, Zumeta, Bonifacio and Duque. He knows Agustín Ibarrola, Giacometti and Luis Fernández López. His painting begins with gestural informalism influenced by Pollock.

1961. In April he began his first individual exhibition in Darro, Madrid. Exhibition at the Schaffer Gallery in New York. New stay in Paris. Influence of Monet. He temporarily returns to figuration.

1962. Young Painting Award from the Círculo Cultural and Ateneo Guipuzcoano. In summer he exhibits at the Hotel Formentor in Mallorca. He moves to live in Madrid. Individual exhibition in the Neblí Room with informalist watercolors.

1963. Madrid. First abstract oil paintings. He is interested in animated films drawn on celluloid without emulsion. Of the various attempts, only The Unconscious Huntress and Homage to Tarzan will remain.

1963-72. He lives in Madrid supported by the patronage of Juan Huarte Beaumont.

He maintains a close friendship with Chumi Chúmez, with whom he will travel to Hamburg, Sweden and New York, as well as other personalities of art and culture.

He meets the actress Terele Pávez, with whom he will maintain a sentimental relationship for several years and whom he portrays (at least) on two occasions.

Initially influenced by Velázquez, he produced an informalist work that would gradually lead to, and with constant recourse to portraiture and figuration, a strongly structured and formal work between abstraction and surrealism.

It begins with reading the Hindu thinker Aurobindo and practicing yoga. As a consequence of this interest, she will travel to Pondicherry (India) to visit the Aurobindo school. On his return he makes a stopover in Rome.

1966. Participates in the creation of the group Gaur, which will make its presentation at the Barandiarán Gallery in San Sebastián and will later exhibit together with the Biscayan group Emen at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, and later, with the Orain group at the Álava Provincial Museum in Vitoria. He studies engraving with Dimitri Papageorgiu.

In October 1968, he exhibited at the Galería Grises in Bilbao. He exhibits the giants at the Huts Gallery in San Sebastián.

In October and November 1970, he participated in the Basque art exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico.

1972. Participates in the Current Basque Art Show within the program of the 1972 Pamplona Meetings. Friendship with the publisher, businessman and cultural promoter Leopoldo Zugaza, who in the following years will organize his exhibitions and the dissemination of his work. She concludes the painting Venice , on which she had worked for seven years.

1973. Return to San Sebastian. Exhibits in the Municipal Halls of Durango. He begins his didactic work with children in the schools of Andoáin, which will later be extended to those of Herrera and Lasarte and which will last until 1978. With his friend Juan de Arteaga he begins a work of cultural animation centered above all on avant-garde music, and citizen and political action, which will last until the end of the decade. Starting this year he will participate in numerous group exhibitions of Basque art throughout the State.

1974. He holds four large retrospective exhibitions in San Sebastián (January, San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián), Pamplona (February, Ciudadela), Bilbao (March, Museum of Fine Arts) and Madrid (May, Exhibition Halls of the Ministry of Culture in the Library National of Spain). Coinciding with the latter, he exhibits at the Kreisler Dos Gallery in Madrid. He finished the large canvas Gran Jardín (Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts). In December his mother passed away.

1975. On April 20, friends, artists and writers offer him a tribute in Berástegui. Exhibits at the Art Gallery B in San Sebastián. He abandons the oil technique, leaving several large canvases unfinished. His public work temporarily distances him from painting.

1977. He makes the sketches for the stained glass windows that occupy the entire stairwell, from the 1st to the 5th floor in the Provincial Savings Bank, in its central building at 15 Garibay Street.

1978. He travels with Juan Arteaga to China suggested by the writings of Mao Tse Tung and the political convulsions of that country. He initiates his chalk series, which will occupy one of his most fertile creative periods.

1979. He dies his father. In autumn, with the writer Maya Aguiriano and other friends, he travels to Düsseldorf (where she meets Joseph Beuys) and to the Europe of East Berlin, Krakow, Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. He suffers a great disappointment when learning about the social and political reality of these countries.

1980. She travels to New York with Maya Aguiriano, Mari Puri Herrero, Alfonso Pérez Agote and Andrés Nagel, to attend the opening of the Chillida retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.

He has several chalk exhibitions in Zarauz, Bilbao, Durango, Sttugart, San Sebastián, Biberach, Barcelona and Madrid.

1981-85. He opens, in partnership with Jacqueline Sánchez and María Jesús Ruiz Balerdi, the Bixen-80 bar (La Colchonería) on Calle San Vicente, in the old town of San Sebastián. In this place he will hold four exhibitions, and he also draws a multitude of portraits for visitors and friends.

He made different trips with Jacqueline, to Italy (1981), Mexico, the Canary Islands (1983), Menorca (1985), Brussels, London and The Hague (1985). Her stays in Frankfurt am Main are frequent, where Jacqueline's daughter, Hilde Koch, a member of that city's ballet, lived, and where she had the opportunity to portray John Cage.

Exhibitions at Inter-Art Galerie in Stuttgart, Volksbank Galerie in Biberach, Exhibition Hall of the Municipal Savings Bank of San Sebastián on Guetaria street.

La Caja gave him a space in the Patronato San Miguel in Ayete, where he will do some great oil paintings. From then on he will indulge in a frenetic activity: 583 oil paintings and thousands of drawings in just seven years. His work develops free of preconceived intentions and is fundamentally based on the mastery of color, with reminiscences of Impressionism and Fauvism, halfway between visionary landscaping and expressionist abstraction.

1986-92. Since the winter of 1986 Jacqueline and Rafael spend the cold months outside of San Sebastián. first to Mojácar (Almería); in 1987 in Gran Canaria, Punta Sardina and Agaete; in 1988 they traveled through Greece and Turkey, and settled for almost three months in Anlaya; in 1989 they searched for a definitive place to winter and found it in Altea (Alicante).

1988. Exhibitions at the Altxerri Gallery in San Sebastián. Galerie Grüner Panther in Frankfurt and Zazpi Arte (Zarauz). They buy a renovated peasant house in Partida de Barranquet and will spend the months between October and May of 1990-91 and the winter of 1991-92 there.

1989. He paints four large canvases to decorate the Auditorium of the Euskadi Symphony Orchestra, in San Sebastián.

1990. Exhibitions at the Gamarra y Garrigues Gallery in Madrid, the Hotel Maisonnave in Pamplona and the Altxerri Gallery in San Sebastián.

1992. On February 26, an accident occurred in the kitchen of his house in Altea, as a result of which he suffered serious burns; as a result of them he died on March 11. He is buried in San Sebastián, in the Polloe cemetery.

2006. His short film painted on celluloid Tribute to Tarzan, is recovered by the Punto de Vista Festival and screened as part of a tribute to the production company X Films.

Works on the Internet

• Painting. 1966-1974. Oil on canvas, 240 x 571 cm (113 Kb).
• Landscape. 1980. Tits on paper (221 Kb).
• Painting. Oil on canvas, 56 x 86 cm.