Born in Cadiz, Andalusia, and a member of what is known as the Generation of ’27, Rafael Alberti started his career as an avant-garde painter. He began to paint when his family moved to Madrid in 1917, and later in his life, he admitted to thinking of himself as a painter before a poet. He started writing poetry in 1920, publishing some of his early works in the ultraista literary review Horizontes. His first book of poems, Marinero en tierra [Sailor in Land], won the prestigious Premio Nacional de Literatura [National Prize for Literature] in 1925. Soon would follow La amante [The mistress] in 1926 and El alba del alhelí [Dawn of the Wallflower], published in 1927. All three of these works were inspired by neo-popularismo, one of the various literary trends that influenced the Generation of ’27.
The arrival of Alberti at the Residencia de Estudiantes [Student Residence] in 1924 marks a crucial moment in his life; it was at the Residencia that he met most of the members that would later form the Generation of ’27: Federico García Lorca, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Jorge Guillén, Gerardo Diego, Pedro Salinas, Vicente Aleixandre and Dámaso Alonso, among others.
La desesperación del artista. El ultraísmo en las cartas cruzadas de Huidobro, Guillermo de Torre y Gerardo Diego