Rafael Úbeda Piñeiro was born in Pontevedra in 1932. Showing artistic promise from a young age in music and painting, he began to study easel painting, murals and engraving all throughout secondary school. After personal poster creations and set design work as well as joining the Pontevedra Symphony Orchestra as a violinist, he enrolled at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1956, specialising in painting, engraving and murals. Following his graduation in 1961, he moved to the Netherlands to study at the St. Joost School of Art and Design (1963-1964) while also learning chalcography-related techniques. His skill led him to join the local engraving-based group ‘Luis’, exhibiting alongside its members in Utrecht, Spakenburg and Breda in the Netherlands. Alongside his academic courses, he worked in the Flip Van der Burgt workshop in Amsterdam, where he was invited to join the group of engraving artists ‘ZEBRA’. Later in his life, he undertook a doctorate in fine arts at the Complutense University of Madrid, studying how sound-colour synaesthesia can inform art.
In 1967, he was selected in Milan to paint a large mural in the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth (Israel), spending some time in Italy to improve his painting. This first experience with large-scale murals carved a new path in his career. Indeed, upon his return to Spain, he created new murals on the island of A Toxa (in the town of O Grove) and in the Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Miracles of Amil (located in Moraña) (1978).
Úbeda is a multiform artist. His initial landscapes embraced a fauve colour palette. Following his stay in Italy, he drifted towards a structural geometry with a post-cubist twist and warm chromaticism. This period was an important and necessary step towards his current and definitive style that is completely expressionist with a geometrical penchant and ironic flavour. The dynamism of his painting stems from a cultivated explosion of colour and movement. His creations display deliberate and highly expressive emphasis on deformation. Much like his art, his influences are multifaceted, from the pre-Romanesque illustrations of Beatus of Liébana and Grünewald, to modern masters like Van Gogh, Picasso and Bacon.
The latter stages of his career were marked by a prolific career as a teacher: at secondary schools in Pontevedra, the Canary Islands and Madrid; as Professor of Painting at the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi; at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid; at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of La Laguna in Tenerife; at the National School of Graphic Arts of Barcelona and at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Pontevedra.
Throughout his career, Úbeda has enjoyed several retrospectives: in Santiago de Compostela (1989); in A Coruña, Spain; in Pontevedra, twice, one retrospective dedicated to painting and another to graphic work; at the Cultural Center of Caixavigo, A Coruña; and at the Xunta de Galicia in Madrid.
