Exhibitions

Galerie Albrecht opens the fall gallery season in Berlin with a small sensation by showing the Spanish painter Rafael Cidoncha. The brilliance of his paintings can easily stand up to that of painters like Diego Velazquez, David Hockney, and Lucian Freud. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and the Spanish poet Luis Antonio de Villena have written about his work.
His works are realistically concentrated on the facts, executed in strong colours, and exude a bright light. They capture moments of peace, views of interiors currently without people, of glasses and cups and objects currently not being used, fruit. Flowerpots, set aside, receive attention, as do gardens – haunted, jungle-like, exotic – in rich hues of green. The main actor is the light; just as a play at the theatre starts with the lights coming on, it enlivens spaces and objects in these paintings, they become the actors in a play about to be performed. His portraits are very lively. They can be either sketch-like, emphasizing just the essential features, or opulent and rich in details. The exhibition contains an opulent portrait of Leon Talley, the well-known African-American writer and editor, and also sketch-like portraits of black people whom he saw on the streets in Paris and invited to his studio. The individuality of the faces is always stressed. Northern Africa is close to him, he frequently travels to Morocco and paints the landscape there; Arab life, objects, and interiors inform the paintings. In Berlin, he is showing his new cactus triptych. The view into a rich cactus landscape moves on from one panel to the next, and viewed all together they form a panorama. Among the interiors in the exhibition, there is a drawing of Goethe’s deathbed, and there are also views into the spaces of the Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Prado in Madrid, as well as other drawings.
Rafael Cidoncha (born in 1952 in Vigo/Galicia) lives in Paris and Madrid. His works are in numerous museums and private collections such as Reina Sophia Madrid, Bibliotheca Nacional, Madrid, Palacio de La Zarzuela, Madrid, College de France, Paris, Baltimore Museum USA, Fundacion Pedro Barrié de la Maza, La Coruna, Duques de Alba, Madrid, David de Rothschild, Paris, Prince of Lowenstein, England, and Juan Abelló, Madrid.