Rafael Tufiño Figueroa (October 30, 1922 – March 13, 2008) was a Puerto Rican painter, printmaker and cultural figure in Puerto Rico, known locally as the "Painter of the People".

Early life

Rafael Tufiño Figueroa was born on October 30, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York where he lived with his parents, Gregoria Figueroa and Agustín Tufiño, until he was ten years old. In 1932, he moved to Puerta de Tierra, the neighborhood located just outside Old San Juan, to live with his grandmother. At the age of 12, he began to work in the workshop of Antonio "Tony" Maldonado, where he painted signs and letters. Tufiño served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946. Some of his first documented drawings date from his tenure in Panama while serving with the Army Signal Corps in Panama. Taking advantage of the

GI Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

, he then moved to Mexico to study painting and engraving at the

San Carlos Academy The Academy of San Carlos ( es, Academia de San Carlos) is located at 22 Academia Street in just northeast of the main plaza of Mexico City. It was the first major art academy and the first art museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1781 as th ...

, where he was exposed to the populist ideas of the

Taller de Gráfica Popular The ''Taller de Gráfica Popular'' (Spanish: "People's Graphic Workshop") is an artist's print collective founded in Mexico in 1937 by artists Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O'Higgins, and Luis Arenal. The collective was primarily concerned with using ar ...

( Spanish: "People's Graphic Workshop") and the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and

José Clemente Orozco José Clemente Orozco (November 23, 1883 – September 7, 1949) was a Mexican caricaturist and painter, who specialized in political murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Sique ...

. Upon returning to Puerto Rico in 1949, he joined the Graphic Arts Workshop of the Community Education Division (DIVEDCO, for its Spanish acronym), which had been created as part of a government campaign to teach the public about health.

Artwork and legacy

Rafael Tufiño's painting included portraits, landscapes and images of Puerto Rico daily life. During the 1950s, he was part of the "''Generación de los Cincuentas''" (the Generation of the Fifties), a group of artists who worked to create a new artistic style and aesthetic identity for Puerto Rico. He also spent time in New York on a

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1954, and returned to the city in the 1960s, when he encountered a generation of Puerto Rican artists particularly intent on exploring and celebrating their cultural heritage. Until 1963, he contributed to the Puerto Rico Department of Public Instruction (now the Department of Education) various paintings, posters, and advertisements to help bring government-sponsored literacy and hygiene programs to poor and illiterate communities in Puerto Rico. Tufiño dedicated his later life to foster art and related studies in Puerto Rican communities, such as taking part in founding an artist workshop / cooperative named

Taller Boricua The Taller Boricua, in Manhattan, New York is a multidisciplinary cultural space founded in 1969 by Puerto Rican artists to promote the arts and culture of the Puerto Rican community in El Barrio/East Harlem, as well as to offer a platform to under ...

in 1970, located in Spanish Harlem, and advocating for the creation of

El Museo del Barrio El Museo del Barrio, often known simply as El Museo (the museum), is a museum at 1230 Fifth Avenue in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is located near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, immediately north of the Museum of the Cit ...

, located on New York's Fifth Avenue at the top of " Museum Mile". For his body of work and his dedication towards minority communities, he received a lifetime achievement award by the

National Arts Club The National Arts Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and members club on Gramercy Park, Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1898 by Charles DeKay, an art and literary critic of the ''New York Times'' to "stimulate, foster, and promote public ...

in New York City in 2003.

Personal life

Rafael Tufiño had two daughters, Nitza Tufiño and Rima Tufiño, and four sons, Rafael Tufiño Jr., Salvatore Tufiño, Sanaria Tufiño and Pablo Tufiño, as well as five grandchildren.

Death and legacy

Tufiño died on March 13, 2008, in

Condado, Puerto Rico Condado is an oceanfront, tree-lined, pedestrian-oriented upper middle to upper class community in Santurce. It is one of the forty subbarrios of Santurce in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Setting Condado is an upscale neighborhood located on the bea ...

at the age of 85 after a battle with lung cancer. Upon hearing his death, the

Governor of Puerto Rico The governor of Puerto Rico ( es, gobernador de Puerto Rico) is the head of government of the Commonwealth (U.S. insular area), Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and commander-in-chief of the Puerto Rico National Guard. The governor has a duty ...

ordered all state flags to fly at

half mast Half-mast or half-staff (American English) refers to a flag flying below the summit of a ship mast, a pole on land, or a pole on a building. In many countries this is seen as a symbol of respect, mourning, distress, or, in some cases, a salut ...

and proclaimed 2 days of national mourning. His work is among the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

, the

Galería Nacional Galería Nacional (National Gallery) located in Old San Juan within the historic colonial section of the capital of Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, li ...

, and the

Museum of Art of Puerto Rico The Museum of Art of Puerto Rico (Spanish: ''Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico'', abbreviated MAPR) is an art museum in Santurce, a barrio of San Juan, Puerto Rico, with 18 exhibition halls. The museum is located in a historic building, formerly occup ...

References

External links