Rafael Rosés Rivadavia

Artist, painter, sculptor

Rafael Rosés Rivadavia (Madrid, 1923-Barcelona, 2014), born in Madrid, of Yeclan origin and Catalan by adoption. Painter and sculptor with a long and fruitful artistic career.

Graduated in Fine Arts, he studied at the Escuela de la Lonja, and the School of Applied Arts and Artistic Trades of Barcelona. He served as institute professor and permanent professor at the School of Applied Arts and Artistic Trades of the city of Barcelona.

In 1945, he entered the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and later graduated with a specialty in painting and sculpture. He has been a disciple of prestigious painters: Francisco Ribera, Luís Muntané, Rigoberto Soler and Ernesto Santasusagna and of no less prestigious sculptors: Jaime Otero, Enrique Monjó, Frederic Marés and the brothers Miguel and Luciano Oslé. Rafael Rosés has left disciples of international projection such as Jaume Plensa. He was nephew of Juan Albert Roses , copyist of El Greco's work.

A versatile artist, Rosés stood out especially in monumental painting with a religious theme in fresco, encaustic and mixed media techniques. Versatile in sculpture, drawing and easel painting, but also in other techniques and disciplines such as sgraffito, engraving, large stained glass windows, mosaics, and the restoration of the Frankfurt Cathedral, the town hall of Oviedo, the busts of the musicians from the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, and the sculptural ensemble of the Colon monument in Barcelona

He was one of the artists who was part of the pictorial group called the Betepocs, one of the first artistic groups to emerge in the postwar years in Catalonia, contemporary to other artistic groups such as Dau al Set, but unlike the latter, they did not have a defined ideology nor did they publish any manifesto. Later the group was called Lucerna.

Several honorary recognitions attest to his prolific and intense work. In Barcelona he painted nineteen parishes, many of them in their entirety, in Tarragona parishes and cathedral, in Lleida and La Seo de Urgell - he was the painter of the archbishopric-. In Murcia, its imaginary stands out: Santísimo Cristo de la Caridad and El Ángel de la Pasión, steps that go out in procession next to the Virgin of the Immaculate of Salcillo, in Yecla and Cieza the monumental paintings and stained glass windows of the Basilicas stand out.

His ashes rest in the Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Castle of Yecla, Murcia, the last temple that he painted in its entirety with monumental paintings.