Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Frutero del mercado de la plaza de Lugo [Lugo Market Fruit Bowl]

Image caption
ALFREDO ALCAÍN

Frutero del mercado de la plaza de Lugo [Lugo Market Fruit Bowl]

  • 2002
  • Gouache on paper
  • 150 x 200 cm
  • Cat. D_330
  • Acquired in 2014
By:
Isabel Tejeda

Part of Alfredo Alcaín’s oeuvre features everyday scenes, traditions, popular and iconic landscapes of Madrid – haberdasher’s and grocery stores, shops that have always been there and are soon to disappear due to the surge in new formats, new building, behaviour and customs -, but he has also worked in other genres throughout his career, drawing on techniques such as collage or discourse referring to painting itself. The pieces in the Banco de España Collection are landscapes and still-lifes, and mark a return to traditional genres.

Lugo Market Fruit Bowl (2002) and Blue Criss Crosses (2005) start from a similar artistic discourse and are a good representation of the latest aesthetic developments in his work. Lines, geometric figures that run along the surface of the work and work as a whole in their reiteration, providing unity. Alcain creates a painting that speaks of painting and refers to painting as quotations. Lugo Market Fruit Bowl is a Cubist still-life on a moiré pattern of blue lines that recalls the work of artists such as Eusebio Sempere. That same moiré is used for Blue Criss Crosses: the artist fills the fabric, even though the line gradually blurs below, creating a loss of consistency that shifts towards disappearing, towards a minimalisation of painting.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Alfredo Alcaín
Madrid 1936

Alfredo Alcaín studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando and then specialised in engraving and lithography at the National School of Graphic Arts. He was particularly prolific in this medium during his artistic career. He also studied film set design at the National Cinema School in Madrid, thanks to which he has occasionally worked on film and theatre productions.

His work has ranged from painting to illustration, collage, sculpture and engraving. His first solo show was held in Madrid in 1962. During the 1960s and 1970s, he developed his personal contribution between pop art and critical realism as a reaction to Abstract Informalism. However, Alcaín never approved of being lumped under that English-language heading: “They included me in it, although I was never really completely part of pop art”. Nonetheless, in keeping with international aesthetic trends, his work shifted to painting with less social discourse in the 1980s. He drew on the art sources of the avant-garde and the expressive parameters of Cubism. He added objects to paintings, calling into question the modern dichotomy between the two- and three-dimensional. In recent decades, Alcaín has opted for a technique linked to geometric abstraction: ‘I am walking towards a precipice, with very linear and synthetic paintings, which depart from figuration’.

Alcaín won the National Award for Plastic Arts (2003). His work has been exhibited in solo shows at museums and private galleries, including the Saint Eloy School of Noble and Fine Arts (Salamanca, 1968); the Valle Santoro Palace (Sangüesa, 1980); Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (1981); la Casa de Los Picos (Segovia, 1994); Malaga University (1997); the Antonio Pérez Foundation (Cuenca, 2001); and Sala Rekalde (Bilbao, 2012).

Isabel Tejeda

 
 
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.