Born in 1938 in Mendoza (Argentina) of Mallorcan parents, Rafael Amengual studied on his own at the University of Cuyo, an academic and self-taught education which he completed by coming to Europe in 1962 to admire the works of the great masters in the museums of England, Spain, Portugal and Italy. In 1963 he settled in Mallorca, where – except for the period between 1983 and 1989, when he lived in Lockerbie (Scotland) – he took up permanent residence. A passionate reader and a person of vast culture and refined sensitivity, throughout his career he coincided with artists such as Lucio Fontana, Alexander Calder, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Joan Miró and Robert Graves, among others, who left an intense mark on both his personality and his work.
Much of his work is in the field of abstraction, although on many occasions there are evident figurative references. His compositions combine both a taste for line and gesture and his interest in material research, which translates into a painstaking treatment of textures and a meticulous attention to detail that leaves not a millimetre of surface untouched.
Particularly seduced by small-scale works of a more intimate nature, both his canvases and his cardboards or papers – one of his favourite supports – are characterised by the constant presence of symbols and a series of elements such as the arch, the cross, the triangle or the heart which, the result of a constant process of formal refinement, form a personal and non-transferable corpus – the ‘Amengual Alphabet’ – which introduce a series of mystical connotations that are evidence of his unequivocal interest in contemplation, nature and oriental philosophy.
He has also worked prolifically in the field of sculpture. Inspired in part by the aesthetics of the found object, he regularly gathered and collected small pieces of humble extraction – normally unnoticed by most people – which, once in his studio, he recreated and assembled, giving them new forms that allowed them to take on new meanings.
Full of mystical evocations that emphasise the transcendent character that the act of creating always had for him, the musical cadences and literary evocations that can be detected in the background of most of his works refer us to dreamlike and inaccessible worlds in which there is no law other than that dictated by magic and poetry.
Apart from the unquestionable quality of his work, Amengual exuded an extraordinary humanity. Rigorous and self-demanding, he was an assiduous contertulio and one of the most charismatic maintainers of the meetings of the Grup Dimecres, whose fiftieth anniversary is being commemorated this 2025, which between 1975 and 1980 brought together a good number of artists, writers, collectors and enthusiasts. Usually meeting at Can Nofre – a bar on the outskirts of Manacor – always on Wednesdays and always around traditional dishes of the island, those meetings were attended by painters such as Miquel Brunet, Llorenç Ginard, Ritch Miller, Jim Bird, Ellis Jacobson, Steve Afif, José María de Labra, Longino, Juli Ramis, Manolo Villalta, Robert Llimós, Guillem Jaume, Jorge Pombo, Manuel H. Mompó, Eusebio Semimós, Eusebio Semimós, José María de Labra, José María de Labra, Eusebio Semimós, José María de Labra and Manuel H. Mompó. Mompó, Eusebio Sempere, Josep Guinovart, Lluís Castaldo and Will Faber, among others, and enthusiastic collectors such as Bartolomé Riera Bassa, Gaspar Oliver, José Castor, José Truyols and Jerónima Sastre.
Throughout his career he held solo and group exhibitions in Argentina, Spain, England, Austria and Germany. In 1992 he received the Grand Silver Medal and the Jury Prize at the IV International Biennial in Cairo (Egypt).
Joan Carles Gomis
