RAFAEL ZABALETA FUENTES (Quesada, Jaén, 1907 - 1960). "Landscape of Zújar", 1938. Oil on canvas. Work reproduced in Guzmán Pérez 79, p. 129. Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Measurements: 70 x 90 cm; 81,5 x 102 cm (frame). In this work the artist presents us with a landscape conceived with a sober chromatism, based on the interrelation of the greens with the pinkish earths, the passages being in charge of the ochres and soft violet tones, which in turn contrast without stridency. The technique is very direct, incorporating the colour on wet in the primary stain and in semi-wet afterwards. The work of realistic connotations is close to the postulates of the Vallecas School, showing a special interest in the telluric. It is worth mentioning that the work goes beyond the purely pictorial, awakening a certain nostalgia or emotion linked to the artist's biography, who portrays the Zújar bridge, this being one of the places he crossed when he finished his mission in the civil war. Born into a well-to-do family, Rafael Zabaleta showed a love of painting from an early age, and after completing his secondary school studies he moved to Madrid and enrolled at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in 1925. His teachers there were Lainez Alcalá, Cecilio Pla and Ignacio Pinazo, and in 1932 he took part for the first time in a group exhibition, that of the San Fernando students. One of his works, entitled "La pareja" ("The Couple"), was selected to illustrate the critical review by Manuel Abril for the magazine "Blanco y Negro". Three years later Zabaleta made his first trip to Paris, where he studied the works of the masters of contemporary painting. In 1937 he was appointed delegate of the National Artistic Treasury, and also around this time he began a series of drawings on the Civil War. At the end of the war he was denounced and briefly spent time in the Higuera de Calatrava concentration camp and in Jaén prison, where his two albums of drawings made during the war were confiscated. Finally freed, in 1940 he settled in Madrid, where he attended the gatherings at the Café Gijón and drew and painted at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. Two years later he visited Aurelio Biosca, director of the Madrid gallery Biosca, with a letter of introduction from the sculptor Manolo Hugué. It was there that he held his first solo exhibition that same year, after being rejected from the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. However, the following year he took part in the First Salón de los Once and became a member of Eugenio d'Ors's Academia Breve de Crítica de Arte, to which Biosca also belonged. Zabaleta took part in most of his Salones de los Once and anthological exhibitions. In 1945 Zabaleta took part in the group exhibition "Floreros y bodegones" held at the National Museum of Modern Art, while he continued to exhibit individually and collectively in galleries in the capital. In 1947 he held his first personal exhibition in Barcelona, at the Argos gallery, and his first monograph was published. Two years later he travelled again to Paris, coming into contact with Picasso, Óscar Domínguez, M. Ángeles Ortiz and others. The year of his definitive consecration was 1951, when he held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid. In 1955 he won the UNESCO Prize at the Hispano-American Biennial in Barcelona. That same year he took part in the Mediterranean Biennial held in Alexandria, and held a solo exhibition in Bilbao. During his last years, Zabaleta became a fully recognised artist, invited to the most important exhibitions and salons both in Spain and in foreign cities of the importance of Paris. The most important collection of his work can be found in the Zabaleta Museum in Quesada, although it is also present in the most prestigious museums in the world, in cities such as Buenos Aires, New York and Tokyo.