Painter. Born in Bilbao in 1935, he died in the same city on January 28, 2000.
A largely self-taught painter, he studied Modern Art in Paris 1961 and 1962. He devoted himself particularly to watercolors and captured the landscapes of Bilbao in many of his paintings.
In 1961 he presented his first solo exhibition of watercolors at the Arthogar gallery in Bilbao and throughout his career he has exhibited in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Oporto, Paris... Among the awards he has received, it is worth highlighting the National Watercolor Prize in 1977.
Since 1961 he has collaborated as an illustrator for the publishing houses Nicole de France and Krisarts, in Paris.
The Bilbao City Council, the Provincial Councils of Bizkaia and Girona, and the Generalitat of Catalonia, among other public entities, own works by Rafael Ortiz Alfau.
Among his extensive work, we highlight La Modelo, On the Route of Don Quixote, Pescadora, Orio, Bilbao, Bermeo and Figura .
The Monta newspaper sees it this way (1972):
"There's no need to dig too deep beneath the pictorial skin of Alfau's paintings to find the native cultural substratum. The chromatic sobriety, the expressive vigor, the constructive solidity of the image are perceptible traces of the Basque. But perhaps it was Arteta who best established the creative peculiarity of plastic realism in his people. And from Arteta's mastery and ethical-aesthetic attitude seems to come Alfau's art. The native cultural roots are as much in the plastic conception as in the solidary identification with what is most endearing and painfully "his." Due to the reiteration of the themes, we can speak of a chronicle of a foggy port landscape, a harsh sociological account of suburban urbanism, a blurred description of human silhouettes barely perceptible in their existential marginalization. There are also other less ed themes, such as an expressive "A portrait of a child, a Parisian landscape, and a wild landscape, the latter perhaps the author's most daring and accomplished work."
Josep El Ace (Bilbo, 1974):
"His thoughtful use of color, his composition of blocks and figures, pliable yet tightly contained, reveals to me an imagination enclosed by very irreplaceable conditions of existence, that is, by its origins. And the fact is that Ortiz Alfau works in function of specific environments, and the positive aspect of that work, its strength, consists in reflecting for us how an individual is the result of a country, how that country possesses its own existence and is current through the work of its individuals."
José Luis Merino ( El País , January 29, 2000):
"Over the years, Rafael Ortiz Alfau acquired remarkable technical mastery. His free-themed watercolors were a pure delight. They represented a formal and technical advance. In artistic terms, perhaps we should attribute to him his most accomplished mastery in this respect. A good watercolorist in common themes, he bordered on perfection in his free themes."
In July 2000, a tribute exhibition to this painter was presented in the Alh ndiga building in Bilbao.