Rafael Perez Contel (1909-1990) - Jugador de pelota

Rafael Perez Contel
1909-1990 Valencia

He began his artistic career by working in sculpture in a workshop of religious imagery, later enrolling at the Valencia School of Fine Arts, where he earned, after a break in his training, the title of teacher of drawing.[a]

With a grant from the Valencian Provincial Council, he went in 1933 to Madrid, where he came into contact with the avant-garde of Spanish visual artists of the time and took part in the founding of the Union of Proletarian Writers and Artists. He also exhibited at the Ateneo de Madrid. He returned to Levante to take charge of drawing instruction at a school in Alcira. A grant enabled him to travel to Paris, where he participated in the Universal Exposition with a sculptural group.

When the Civil War began, he returned to Alcira, joining the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals, where he contributed to the plastic arts workshops and published his works in the magazine Nueva Cultura directed by Josep Renau. During the conflict, he worked in the Republican propaganda group, leaving a substantial body of wartime posters. He also collaborated on the design of magazines and the preparation of bulletins and notebooks, as well as with the Valencia Workers’ Institute.

After the Francoist victory, he was tried and sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of “aiding the rebellion,” a sentence he served at Valencia’s Modelo Prison. Upon his release, he continued his work, bounded by the limits the regime permitted, especially in religious imagery, and served as a professor of Drawing at the Secondary Education Institute in Játiva, where he was also director for several years. From 1976, he taught in Valencia. He died in Valencia at the age of eighty-one.

His work is exhibited at the City Museum of Valencia, at the Museum of Játiva (the town to which he is an honorary son), at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Villafamés, and at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art.