Rafael Alberti (El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz, Spain, 16 December 1902 – El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz, Spain, 28 October 1999) was a Spanish poet, writer and painter, a member of the Generation of '27 and considered one of the leading figures of twentieth-century Spanish literature.
In 1917, he moved with his family to Madrid, where he began his artistic career, initially devoting himself to painting. In 1920, he participated in the Salón de Otoño, and in 1922, he exhibited his work at the Ateneo de Madrid. His growing interest in literature led him to write his first poems, later collected in Marinero en tierra, for which he received the National Literature Prize in 1925. During these years, he frequented the Residencia de Estudiantes and established relationships with Federico García Lorca, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Jorge Guillén and other members of the Spanish cultural avant-garde.
His literary production evolved from poetry inspired by popular traditions towards the Surrealist explorations of Sobre los ángeles (1929) and poetry increasingly engaged with political and social issues. In 1932, he married the writer María Teresa León, with whom he founded the magazine Octubre in 1933. During the Spanish Civil War, he actively supported the defence of the Republic, collaborating with the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals and publications such as El Mono Azul.
Following the Republican defeat in 1939, he began a prolonged exile that took him first to France and subsequently to Argentina and Uruguay. During his years in South America, he continued to develop an extensive literary and artistic practice, publishing works such as Entre el clavel y la espada (1941), A la pintura (1945–1948) and Retornos de lo vivo lejano (1952). His production during this period was marked by memory, exile and the dialogue between poetry and the visual arts.
In Uruguay, he established a close relationship with architect Antonio Bonet Castellana and photographer Jeanne Mandello. In 1945, Bonet designed the La Gallarda residence in Punta del Este for Alberti and María Teresa León, where the poet created the Panel de la amistad (Panel of Friendship), a pictorial composition dedicated to various friends and figures from his cultural circle. In 1947, Jeanne Mandello photographed Alberti beside this work, creating an image that documents the encounter between poetry, painting, photography and architecture.
This relationship was revisited in the book Alberti, Bonet, Mandello. Poeta y pintor, arquitecto, fotógrafa. Historias en torno a La Gallarda (2019), written by architect Rafael Lorente Mourelle and Alicia Cagnasso. The publication reconstructs the careers of the three protagonists and the personal and cultural relationships that developed around La Gallarda during their exile, taking Mandello's photograph and the rediscovery of the Panel de la amistad as its starting point.
In 1963, he moved to Rome, where he continued his literary and artistic activities until his return to Spain in 1977, following the restoration of democracy. That same year, he was elected to the Spanish Parliament as a representative of the Communist Party of Spain, although he resigned his seat to continue dedicating himself to literature and cultural activities. Among his numerous distinctions, he received the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1983 and was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1989.
His relationship with the visual arts and architecture, present throughout his career, also continued through contemporary publications. In its issue 06/07 (page 45), METALOCUS published his previously unpublished poem "Sonsonete de La Coca-Cola", bringing his poetic voice into a publication devoted to the relationships between architecture, art and contemporary culture.
His legacy encompasses an extensive body of poetry, theatre, memoirs and painting, in which artistic experimentation, political commitment and the memory of exile constitute some of the central themes of his work.
