Rafael Alberti

Rafael
Alberti, (b. Dec. 16, 1902, Puerto de
Santa María, Spain—d. Oct. 28, 1999,
Puerto de Santa María), Spanish writer
of Italian Irish ancestry, regarded as
one of the major Spanish poets of the
20th century.
Alberti
studied art in Madrid and enjoyed some
success as a painter before 1923, when
he began writing and publishing poems in
magazines. His first book of poetry,
Marinero en tierra (1925; “Sailor on
Land”), recalled the sea of his native
Cádiz region and won a national prize. A
member of the so-called Generation of
1927, Alberti helped to celebrate the
tercentenary of Luis de Góngora in 1927,
and Góngorist influence is apparent in
the work published in that period, El
alba del alhelí (1927; “The Dawn of the
Wallflower”) and Cal y canto (1928;
“Quicklime and Song”). With his next
book, the somewhat Surrealist Sobre los
ángeles (1929; Concerning the Angels),
Alberti established himself as a mature
and individual voice.
In the
1930s Alberti’s work became overtly
political; he wrote plays, traveled
widely, joined the Communist Party—from
which he was later expelled—and founded
a review, Octubre. He fought for the
Republic in the Spanish Civil War and
afterward fled to Argentina, where he
worked for the Losado publishing house
and resumed both his poetry and his
earlier interest, painting. In 1941 he
published a collection of poems, Entre
el clavel y la espada (“Between the
Carnation and the Sword”), and in 1942 a
book of drama, prose, and poetry about
the Civil War, De un momento a otro
(“From One Moment to Another”). He
published a collection of poems inspired
by painting, A la pintura (1945; “On
Painting”), and collections on maritime
themes, such as Pleamar (1944; “High
Tide”). After 1961, he lived in Italy,
returning to Spain in 1977. Alberti’s
autobiography, La arboleda perdida (The
Lost Grove), was published in two
volumes, the first in 1942 and the
second in 1975.