MORGES LAUSANNE, 1970 Rafael Valentino
The landscapes of Rafael Valentino lead us to better understand the harmony with which we must advance in the knowledge of ourselves in the environments that are ours.
Possessing a serious and constant character, he found that academicism and its norms limited it too much within the realism towards which it felt called.
HARMONIC FEELINGS IN THE WORK OF RAFAEL VALENTINO
by Josep M. Cadena
Circumstantially born (1970) in a small Swiss city, located on one of the shores of Lake Leman, Rafael Valentino at two years of age was already in Granada. Andalusia has been, then, its natural place of growth within its natural tendency – evident since very small – towards painting. Soon it became clear that he had qualities and skills, virtues that were very useful to insist on his particular willingness to become a painter by himself. Possessing a serious and constant character -very much of what is said about the great Andalusian community obeys the topic and, in particular, the Grenadians are distinguished by their self-imposed and their human balance- found that the academicism and its norms limited it too much within the realism towards the one who felt called. And although he valued very positively the capacity of advance of different European contemporary artists – he has always expressed that Klimt and Kolo Moser influenced him in a certain way in his first stages – he wanted to find his own roots. And I would discover them as he painted his Granada surroundings.
I think we have to value this exhibition very positively. And first of all I want to highlight the interest that from the Rusiñol Gallery its directors, Ignacio and Victoria Cabanas, have put so that Sant Cugat has almost the scoop in presenting this painter from Granada. And in the main place -Rafael Valentino is the undisputed protagonist of the exhibition- there is a work that, based on the earthly sense of the landscape that surrounds it, has the amplitude of the marine visions. And it is that in a distant way, given the short age that then had, the birth in Morges, near Lake Leman as I said at the beginning, left in it -I interpret it, aware that it is an idea that needs to be recast – the feelings of immensity and constant growth in the desire for beauty.
The landscapes of Rafael Valentino lead us to better understand the harmony with which we must advance in the knowledge of ourselves in the environments that are our own.
