Rafael Tufiño Figueroa

Tufiño 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. Some of his first documented drawings date from his tenure in Panama while serving with the Army Signal Corps in Panama. Taking advantage of the GI Bill, he then moved to Mexico to study painting and engraving at the San Carlos Academy,[4] where he was exposed to the populist ideas of the Taller de Gráphica Popular  ( "People's Graphic 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.