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Rafael Pérez Giménez, known as Rafael Barradas
(Montevideo, 1890-1929)

In 1914 when painter Rafael Barradas crossed the border between France and Spain, he probably had little idea that he was coming to our country to stay. What he certainly would not have predicted was that after residing here for fourteen years, the history of the relationship between the art of inland Spain the concept of modern would need to be rewritten.

Rafael Pérez Giménez took his father's second surname, Barradas, as his artistic name. The son of Spanish emigrants, he was born in Montevideo in 1890. Self-taught, though belonging to a family marked by creative interests, he experienced with intensity the social, economic, and cultural growth that was taking place in the Uruguayan capital at the start of the 20th century in the Atenas del Plata . Modernism (the Hispano-American symbol) continued to be in one of its best moments of production and within that context, young Barradas, a regular in creative magazines, founder of satirical publications such as Monigote , café intellectual, heir to a secular bohemian lifestyle compete with libertarian whims, both knew and practiced the synthetism and chromatism that originated with post-impressionist poets.

In 1913, at the age of twenty three, he was able to make the obligatory trip to Europe thanks to the generosity of his friend, the tenor Alfredo de Medici. Starting in Milan, moving to various parts of Switzerland and eventually to Paris, Barradas was introduced to the first movement , especially cubism and futurism, which he quickly assimilated, producing his best work, at least until 1922.

His first satirical illustrations were published in L'Esquella de la Torratxa when he arrived in Barcelona. However, he had little interest in staying in the Catalonian capital, and soon set out for Madrid, a trip that he undertook by foot, contributing to his mythical personal biography. Exhausted and weakened by his extreme effort, Barradas was forced to remain in the outskirts of Zaragoza. After regaining his strength, he married Simona Láinez, the shepherdess who assisted him on his journey, and whom he would always call Pilar. He remained in the Aragonese capital for slightly more than a year. In Zaragoza, while collaborating on the magazine Paraninfo , Barradas produced his first works, and his first Spanish expositions. However, the artist did not stop there. He sent for his family in Uruguay and, at the start of Spring of 1916 they settled in Barcelona.

We lack data regarding Barradas's first year of his second stay in Barcelona, making this period somewhat hazy. We do know, however, that at the beginning of 1917 he was already working as a graphic illustrator. We also know that his encounter with Torres-García, Cleso Lagar, Dalmau, Salvat-Papasseit, and some European creators seeking refuge in the capital, and later with a young Miró would mark the first avant-garde moment in contemporary Catalonian culture. The esthetic vitalism of Barradas, with a certain Nietzshean touch, was especially identified with that of Salvat and the transformed Torres-García. This encounter was written up in the fortnightly publication promoted by Salvat, Un Enemic del Poble (1917-) and in the ephemeral and precarious publication Arc Voltaic (1918) where he collaborated with the young Miró. Furthermore, in Barcelona Barradas exposed in Dalmau (1917) and in the Laietanes Galleries (1918) and was linked to Courbet Group. It was in Barcelona where Barradas would conceive, practice and expose the first moment of his vibrationism . The first personal ism in which he launches into what would later become a chain of numerous links to the avant-garde. Vibrationism has always been associated with futurism, although in reality it was a personal synthesis of resources provided by the first isms.

The first Barcelonean avant-garde movement emerged in 1917, burgeoned in 1918 and disappeared in 1919. Before its disappearance, in the summer of 1918, Barradas decided to move to Madrid. In the State capital everything was different. References to avant-garde art were practically non-existent. Barradas made it his mission to give it a place and to initiate a true transformation of Spanish culture stemming from the capital. Faced with a market totally lacking in modern art, Barradas began earning a living first as a graphic illustrator and toy-maker and a while later, in 1919, as a costume and set designer at the Eslava Theater where the company of poet, publisher, and theatrical promoter, Gregorio Martínez Sierra performed. As it turned out, his need to survive brought about significant changes in graphic design in Madrid, as the contributions Barradas made to the Eslava Theater served as a point of departure for the new scenographic Spanish art.

The Barradas who frequented the Café del Prado, Café de Oriente and the Ateneo of Madrid was, at the start, a solitary Barradas. Despite popular opinion, the ultraists and young members of the Generation of '27 were late in arriving. Between 1918 and 1923 Barradas only exposed his work on three occasions. And yet during these years his paintings never ceased to evolve. The poetic vibrationist quickly coexisted with, gave way to, or was transformed into a new modality which the painter called Cubism , a modality that lasted until 1921. A variation of his personal style of Cubism was what the artist himself called clownism petitioned by his artistic practice which, although lacking in precise definition, decisively influenced the drawings and compositions of Lorca and Dalí. But perhaps more than anything, Clownism was the forerunner of something else. In 1922, coinciding with the final moments of the Barradas-style Cubism, the artist brought about a decisive turnabout in his own work. His new mode became known as planism and implied, in general terms, and not without harmony, the return of order to his work.

Drawings that he did in Luco de Liloca between 1923 and 1924, and which became well-known after being published in the magazine Alfar, offered proof that the movement was drifting away from modern. In them Barradas, using local peasants as models, implemented a type of drawing that can undoubtedly be related to the ingresco classicism of Picasso. It is also true, however, that when the drawings were transferred to oil paint on canvas, they took on a different quality. Either due to technical problems or stylistic will, the opaque quality and the somber tone brought about, along with the purity of the linear sketching of the physical features, what the artist referred to as black light . A deep and melancholy tone imposed on the works of the Uruguayan artist, along with his well-founded fixation with the working class land laborers awoke in Barradas a sense of the vernacular which had been so characteristic of Spanish painting since the beginning of the century. The series Los Magníficos , in which Barradas, with more formal preparation than was supposed, showed both the punished, although powerful physical features of land workers along with the enormous and genuine admiration that he felt towards them.

The Barradas who returned to Madrid as the Spring of 1924 was approaching, was, in any case, a changed Barradas. His vibrationist and cubist optimism had opened the way to a deeper and more severe tone. The frank linguistic empathy of his first isms became diluted or began looking for incentives of another nature. But even so, the years 1924 and 1925, which were scarce in terms of his activity, were especially important biographically speaking. His work as a graphic illustrator reached its highest level after designing covers and vignettes for the Revista del Occidente while his achievements as costume and set designer were awarded prizes in the Salón de las Artes Decorativas in Paris , the Salón del Arte Deco, where Martínez Sierra had presented a stand, and finally in 1925 in the crucial first exposition in the Sociedad de Artistas Ibéricos in Madrid, Barradas was widely recognized as the true emblem of arte nuevo, the renovation of Spanish plastic.

Paradoxically, however, this generalized recognition did little to spur him or his work on to heightened positions of dominance or influence. Barradas may have tried to go Paris, though indications that he actually reached the French capital are unreliable. In the early months of 1925 (and probably 1926) the artist was in San Juan de Luz where he created an important series of sea-related themes, stylistically in keeping with the derivations of planism, although with a more expressive touch. Following this experience, Barradas was overcome by a crisis that, up to then, seemed unthinkable. The illness, which had appeared in 1920, became quite worrisome in 1923, and notably weakened his physical capacity by 1926. His break-up with Martínez Sierrra, for personal as well as professional reasons, further aggravated his already precarious personal situation.

In the early months of 1926 the Barradas family moved to Catalonia. They resided in a modest flat in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. where he would often be visited by such renowned intellectuals as Lorca and Dalí, Gasch, Montanya and Diaz Plaja. Their gatherings brought life to the Ateneíllo de Hospitalet, representing a mythical part of Spanish culture during those years. Between 1926 and 1928 he continued painting the series Los Magníficos . His landscapes of Hospitalet demonstrate his interest in the vernacular sprouting from language that is developed from a primitive voice. The artist initiated as well a peculiar form of religious art known as Serie Mística . However, the prospect of returning to Uruguay moved him to create, using a very different register from his previous works, los Estampones , evocative recreations of Montevideo's Barrio Sur in 1900.

But neither his new plastic series nor the affection around which he was surrounded made it possible for Barradas to be reborn in Catalonia. Everyone who visited the Ateneíllo de Hospitalet commented on the artist's extremely delicate physical state and equally precarious conditions under which he was living. In the end his friends in Montevideo managed to persuade him to return to his country of origin. In November of 1928 Barradas went back, taking with him practically everything he produced while in Spain. He was given a hero's reception and in his head the artist had great plans. However, this time his illness and utter exhaustion triumphed over his enthusiasm and on February 12th, 1929, a mere four months after his arrival in Montevideo, and at the age of 39, Barradas passed away. He was 39 years old. For half a century, due to Spanish ingratitude, he remained forgotten. Fortunately, however, at the start of the 1980's, both he, as a creative figure, and his works started to be retrieved and situated in places they most deserved.