Rafael Mirabal was born in Havana, Cuba on June 8, 1931. At the age of ten, while attending a theater presentation of the play Don Juan Tenorio, he discovered the illusion created through the strength of scenic painting; the elusive vanishing points, the renaissance conception of perspective.
Mirabal commenced architectural studies in 1950 at the School of Architecture at the University of Havana and immediately began working as an artist in the area of architectural illustrations. On December 25, 1954, he married Virginia Quesada and had two daughters, Virginia and Jeannette. Between 1959 and 1966, Mirabal worked as professor of Architectural Design and Freehand Drawing at the University of Havana. He simultaneously worked as architectural illustrator, and theatrical set designer with various theater groups in Cuba. Despite the increasingly repressive political persecution of Castro’s regime he achieved a high level of success. During this period, the artist was offered scholarships, awards, and invitations to work in London with Josef Svoboda, considered by many as one of the great set designers of the Twentieth Century. The Cuban government denied him all these opportunities. The situation became grave as threats increased. After suffering imprisonment, only one option remained, to escape from Cuba.
After living in Los Angeles for two years, he relocated to Puerto Rico in 1969, were he lived until 1975, the year he established himself permanently in Florida. During those years, Mirabal continued to work as a designer and illustrator of architectural projects, however, he dedicated himself to his art, and in 1974 he presented his work, Yemayá, at UNESCO’s FirstArtGallery, organized by the Museum of Art of the University of Puerto Rico. From 1974 and until 1981, in addition to being exhibited in Puerto Rico, Mirabal’s work was displayed in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), Caracas (Venezuela) Miami, Chicago and Washington D.C. (United States).
Between 1986 and 1988, in the cities of New York and Miami, he designed theatrical sets, costumes, and stage lighting for The Birds Fly with Death, by Edilio Peña, Pancho Devil,byCarlos Morton, Exile, by Matías Montes Huidobro, and The Shoe Box, by Virgilio Piñera. From 1993 to 1998, Mirabal exhibited in Washington D.C., Miami, West Palm Beach and Boca Raton works entitled: La Pieta, at the United States Capital Rotunda; Mirabal, at the Delray Art Center; Hispanic Heritage Program, for the Internal Revenue Service; Hispanic, at the Okeechobee Library Branch; Nostalgia, for the Nathan D. Rosen Museum; and a collective presentation at the Hispanic Cultural Foundation. He now offers us his “grand formats.” These recent paintings reaffirm Mirabal’s esthetic obsession with architectural perspective and the theatrical scenic illusions created by nature’s macro spaces. He claims that “nature is the one thing that perseveres.” In Mirabal’s own words, “My work is a sort of autobiography which reflects the collective subconscious of an entire culture.”