Carlos Alcolea dropped out of his law degree in Madrid in 1968 to pursue painting. He drew on an eclectic group of artistic and literary models, including Marcel Duchamp, David Hockney, Ronald B. Kitaj and Jim Dine, in close dialogue with popular culture, as part of a conceptual approach based on appropriation. Authors such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Gustave Flaubert and Marcel Proust also helped him form a view of everyday life that led him to develop a personal style as one of the founders of the New Madrid Figuration movement. In the wake of the painter Luis Gordillo, Alcolea shifted his figurative style and imbued his compositions and figures with an ambiguity that requires a mental reading of the work that is as complex as the preparation process, in which the influence of psychoanalysis can be seen. Drifting forms, automatic signs, anti-naturalist colouring and repositionable structures are characteristic of his paintings, paperboards and drawings in his brief but intense artistic career.

Associated with the Spanish galleries promoting New Figuration, Alcolea had his first solo show at Amadís (Madrid, 1971) and subsequently at Buades (Madrid, 1975); he also took part in the legendary ‘1980’ at the Juana Mordó Gallery (Madrid, 1979) and ‘Madrid D.F.’, at Madrid Municipal Museum (1980). The Spanish Modern Art Museum also held an important solo show of his work (Madrid, 1980). After his death, retrospectives were held at Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1998); the Centre for Contemporary Art of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2003); and Caixa Galicia (Ferrol, La Coruña, 2008). In 1992, he was awarded the National Award for Plastic Arts posthumously.

Roberto Díaz