"My characters don’t go towards the caricature. I flee away from all kinds of cartoonish ornamentation. They are born from a fantastic, surreal, and expressionist figuration. I consider them hybrid characters that are closely related to my admiration for Dubuffet, Bonifacio, and Alfonso Fraile. My characters live in a transcended daily life, clean days, sunsets, and fresh air."
— Rafa Macarrón
Rafa Macarrón interprets reality though joyful, invented characters based on people he encounters in everyday life. Building fantastical worlds in his canvases, the Spanish artist, a self-taught, former professional cyclist, imagines idyllic backstories for each of his characters, set in color-washed compositions that play with scale in flattened space. Macarrón draws influence from Spanish forebears, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Francisco Goya and the El Paso group, a collective of painters who worked in the style of Art Informel from 1957-1960. Set against a Rothko-esque background rendered in DayGlo, Macarrón’s schematic figures, featuring wide-open eyes on oversized heads, populate a realm filled with objects both recognizable— a ladder, a table, a cigarette— and imagined.
- Provenance
  Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Rafa Macarrón

Los mentores

mixed media on canvas
76 3/4 x 51 1/4 in. (194.9 x 130.2 cm)
Executed in 2013.

Estimate
$70,000 - 100,000

Sold for $226,800

Contact Specialist

Patrizia Koenig
Specialist, Head of Day Sale, Afternoon Session
+1 212 940 1279
pkoenig@phillips.com

New York Auction 19 May 2022