At 2½, Raphael traveled through Europe for six months with his parents while his father received the Abbey-Austin Fellowship for mural painting. The experience left a lasting impression. When he was six, the family traveled to Mexico after Joseph won the fellowship again, studying the frescoes of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Raphael was also deeply influenced by late nights with his mother, watching her create intricate graphite drawings and paintings while they talked, watched movies, and shared a love of comic books.
From 1983 to 1987, Tiberino attended the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. He then studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, his mother’s alma mater, from 1987 to 1992, majoring in painting and minoring in printmaking.
After graduation, he regularly exhibited in Philadelphia, Manhattan, and Los Angeles, while also teaching and curating shows. In 1996, he moved to Manhattan and co-founded Subculture Gallery in Nolita. There he met painter Danny Simmons, later exhibiting at Simmons’s Brooklyn gallery, The Corridor, and curating Boom! Zap! at Rush Arts in 2004.
Today, Tiberino continues to paint, draw, illustrate, teach, curate, and support the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum in Philadelphia.
