Rafael Tufiño

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". His work is among the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the U.S. Library of Congress, the Galería Nacional in Puerto Rico, and the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico.

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. Later, he moved to Mexico to study painting and engraving at the San Carlos Academy, where he was exposed to the populist ideas of the Popular Graphics Workshop and the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. 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.

Rafael Tufiño's painting included portraits, landscapes and images of Puerto Rico daily life. His work is among the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the U.S. Library of Congress, the Galería Nacional in Puerto Rico, and the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico. 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.

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