Rafael Aburto

Rafael Aburto

Architect

It is certainly not a conventional architectural exhibit. On the contrary, it intends to show a suprising and different architectural legacy with no previous conditions or prejudice, neither better nor worse, in order to enrich the repository of Spanish modern architecture. His historiographical formulation, somewhat ossified today, needs to be revamped with the inclusion of architecture and architects who, like Aburto, conquered modernity - a different modernity - from positions that were less orthodox but equally valid.

Rafael Aburto had essentially been a mystery: a sideways, unusual and exceptional character. However, getting to know his career involves the discovery of a stunning creative flow that covers all facets of his activity, hardly definable, from painting to architecture, along with his theoretical and critical work. Because the traces of Aburto's productive work, whatever it may be, are easily confused with his personality. He is an artist, a man always in search of something, dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the immediate situation. That is why his architecture is not easy to catalogue, torn between the death throes of a masked academicism and the revisionists ideals of late-modernity.

The exhibit consists of 8 boxes that simultaneously serve as containers to transport and support their content. The contrast between the hardness of the outer wrapping and the surprising and impetuous inner world is also very characteristic of Aburto's modus operandi.