Painter, draughtsman and cartoonist · 1933-1982
Painter, draughtsman and cartoonist
Rafael Bethencourt López, known as Rafaely, was a painter, draughtsman and cartoonist born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on 31 March 1933. He died in the same city on 28 October 1982. Largely self-taught and trained at the Escuela Luján Pérez, he took part in the emergence of abstraction in Canarian art in the 1950s and 1960s.
Rafaely began his artistic activity in the 1950s. After an exhibition of caricatures at the Club Marino in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1956, he joined the Escuela Luján Pérez as a student. Caricature remained a constant practice while his painting moved towards non-figuration and abstraction.
In 1959 he presented the Exposición didáctica de Arte Contemporáneo at El Museo Canario. Two years later he co-founded Grupo Espacio with Felo Monzón, Lola Massieu, Pino Ojeda and Francisco Lezcano. The group brought together diverse positions around abstraction and helped make avant-garde languages more visible in Gran Canaria and Tenerife.
His output included drawing, painting, collage, murals, cartoons and stage design. The CAAM highlights the tension in his career between the figurative grounding of caricature and personal abstract production. The 1960s were especially active for exhibitions, with shows at the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, the Ateneo de La Laguna and the Modern Art Gallery. After his death, the Escuela Luján Pérez organised a tribute exhibition in 1983.
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