Alfredo Alcain
07 Sep - 16 Nov 2012
ALFREDO ALCAIN
7 September - 18 November 2012
The exhibition that Alfredo Alcain (Madrid, 1936) is presenting in Sala Rekalde brings together a good number of the images that were shown at the beginning of 2012 in the Museo Casa de la Moneda in Madrid, when he was awarded the Tomás Francisco Prieto Prize in 2010. That set of work –made up exclusively of drawings and graphic work -, is now completed in Bilbao with a very significant series of paintings and sculptures which contextualise and accompany it.
These works by the artist who won the National Plastic Arts Award in 2003, belong to private collections and Basque museums, thereby demonstrating the warmth of the relationship that Alcain has always enjoyed with the Basque Country, since he held his first individual show in 1965 at the gallery Illescas in Bilbao, thanks to his friendship with the painter Ricardo Toja.
The catalogue published for the occasion by Sala Rekalde contains an important collaboration by Bernardo Atxaga, with the publishing of a poem dedicated to Alcain and, exclusively and for the first time, translated into Basque by the writer himself.
Alfredo Alcain has regularly exhibited his works in the Basque Country, at the Ederti Gallery in Bilbao and in other art spaces. He has also held important shows such as that organised in 1981 by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum –with the complete cataloguing of all his graphic work from 1957 to 1980-, or the exhibition dedicated to Cézanne pétit-point in 1988 which was held in the rooms that the Caja de Ahorros Vizcaína had on the Gran Vía in Bilbao. Some of the images exhibited on that occasion are gathered together once more in the show at Sala Rekalde.
Although it is not anthological, the exhibition at Sala Rekalde runs through the career of a very complete and singular artist. The more than forty years work that comprise the show (from 1969 to 2011), reflect the consolidation and constant evolution of his work, shifting from the natural and figurative toward a far more abstract style in which the linear predominates.
THE EXHIBITION
When Alberto Corazón published El sol sale para todos, in 1979, an iconographic study of Madrid business façades, Alfredo Alcain’s interest had already been drawn to these iconic models in the capital’s popular neighbourhoods for more than ten years. From 1966 and until the mid-1970s his painting explored shop windows and façades, with their deep traditional flavour and already on the way out. While Anglo-Saxon pop art had set its gaze on the advanced consumer societies, Alcain’s pop language re-examines, in contrast, what marked traditional Spanish society, which would soon cease to be as developmentalism prevailed. Also too, shelf paper, decorated strips that adorned simple wooden cupboards in popular households, or embroidery canvas, deeply rooted women’s skills, are other motifs frequented by Alcain.
In the early 1980s, when he discovered in a haberdashery store in Madrid a canvas for petit-point reproducing a well-known still life by Paul Cézanne, he began a series focussing on still lifes, already previously hinted at in the shelf paper work and, to some degree, in the shop window displays. Now, the experimentation centred over and over again on the same image by Cézanne, concentrating on details or on all its expression, through graphic treatments or different chromatic versions. Drawing and colour became stylised, following lines marked by the coloured areas of petitpoint, ranging from the most monochord versions to those in which the colour explodes in all its musicality.
As the decade advanced other kinds of still lifes began to overlap, this time in oval format and with Cubist diction, perhaps as a natural historical evolution of the Cezanne still lifes. Putting the synthetic nature of the latter aside, they cast a more illusionist spell, and some of them pay homage to other admired painters.
The final decade of the century marks the transition to a new conception of the Cubist nature morte. Far more schematic than the oval format images, the new creations constitute a series of still lifes and fruit bowls with multiple variables both in the treatment of the image and in the graphic technique employed. In these examples, drawing and colour are disassociated: the linear warp constructs the drawing, emphasised at times by a line of shading, and the colour expands monochord over large surfaces, delimited by the drawing’s geometry, or is split into blocks of colour differentiated with all the combinations possible.
Inevitably, in the new millennium, his advance along this path that eventually schematises shapes so that they almost disappear, took Alfredo Alcain to abstraction. There now only existed lines and stains, intricate tangles or linear grids in an unceasing horror vacui. And in the end the ringing of the colour is what resounds with all its tonal chords.
The dibujos de teléfono are altogether something else, stemming from a habit that, as Alcain points out, is common to many painters. This quirk, which consists of scribbling on a paper until it is completely covered whilst talking on the phone, has provided a quite diverse assortment of drawings. They are not all equally spontaneous, as indeed some larger sized cards that Alcain placed at the side of the telephone point to a more conscious intention. There are even drawings that were intervened and coloured at a later moment.
Similarly, although the practice has not been so frequent, Alcain has produced some still lifes in bronze and a series of wooden sculpture objects that he calls “maderitas”, made as they are with pieces of slats and frames, such as El rascacielos, which can be seen in Sala Rekalde. All these sculptures are small format.
THE ARTIST
Alfredo Alcain (Madrid, 1936) studied at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid and continued his apprenticeship in engraving and lithography at the National School of Graphic Arts in the capital. His interest also turned to Cinema Decoration, which he studied at the National Cinema School in Madrid. Within that medium he collaborated on two films by Basilio Martín Patiño, Nueve cartas a Berta and Canciones para después de una guerra. In addition he is the author of the scenery and masks for Peter Fitzi and José Luís Gómez’s staging of El pupilo quiere ser autor by Peter Handke.
The list of exhibitions held is innumerable, both in museums and Spanish public institutions that possess work of his, and in private galleries. Amongst the numerous prizes he has received are the National Plastic Arts Award (2003) and theTomás Francisco Prieto Prize of the Museo Casa de la Moneda (2010).
7 September - 18 November 2012
The exhibition that Alfredo Alcain (Madrid, 1936) is presenting in Sala Rekalde brings together a good number of the images that were shown at the beginning of 2012 in the Museo Casa de la Moneda in Madrid, when he was awarded the Tomás Francisco Prieto Prize in 2010. That set of work –made up exclusively of drawings and graphic work -, is now completed in Bilbao with a very significant series of paintings and sculptures which contextualise and accompany it.
These works by the artist who won the National Plastic Arts Award in 2003, belong to private collections and Basque museums, thereby demonstrating the warmth of the relationship that Alcain has always enjoyed with the Basque Country, since he held his first individual show in 1965 at the gallery Illescas in Bilbao, thanks to his friendship with the painter Ricardo Toja.
The catalogue published for the occasion by Sala Rekalde contains an important collaboration by Bernardo Atxaga, with the publishing of a poem dedicated to Alcain and, exclusively and for the first time, translated into Basque by the writer himself.
Alfredo Alcain has regularly exhibited his works in the Basque Country, at the Ederti Gallery in Bilbao and in other art spaces. He has also held important shows such as that organised in 1981 by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum –with the complete cataloguing of all his graphic work from 1957 to 1980-, or the exhibition dedicated to Cézanne pétit-point in 1988 which was held in the rooms that the Caja de Ahorros Vizcaína had on the Gran Vía in Bilbao. Some of the images exhibited on that occasion are gathered together once more in the show at Sala Rekalde.
Although it is not anthological, the exhibition at Sala Rekalde runs through the career of a very complete and singular artist. The more than forty years work that comprise the show (from 1969 to 2011), reflect the consolidation and constant evolution of his work, shifting from the natural and figurative toward a far more abstract style in which the linear predominates.
THE EXHIBITION
When Alberto Corazón published El sol sale para todos, in 1979, an iconographic study of Madrid business façades, Alfredo Alcain’s interest had already been drawn to these iconic models in the capital’s popular neighbourhoods for more than ten years. From 1966 and until the mid-1970s his painting explored shop windows and façades, with their deep traditional flavour and already on the way out. While Anglo-Saxon pop art had set its gaze on the advanced consumer societies, Alcain’s pop language re-examines, in contrast, what marked traditional Spanish society, which would soon cease to be as developmentalism prevailed. Also too, shelf paper, decorated strips that adorned simple wooden cupboards in popular households, or embroidery canvas, deeply rooted women’s skills, are other motifs frequented by Alcain.
In the early 1980s, when he discovered in a haberdashery store in Madrid a canvas for petit-point reproducing a well-known still life by Paul Cézanne, he began a series focussing on still lifes, already previously hinted at in the shelf paper work and, to some degree, in the shop window displays. Now, the experimentation centred over and over again on the same image by Cézanne, concentrating on details or on all its expression, through graphic treatments or different chromatic versions. Drawing and colour became stylised, following lines marked by the coloured areas of petitpoint, ranging from the most monochord versions to those in which the colour explodes in all its musicality.
As the decade advanced other kinds of still lifes began to overlap, this time in oval format and with Cubist diction, perhaps as a natural historical evolution of the Cezanne still lifes. Putting the synthetic nature of the latter aside, they cast a more illusionist spell, and some of them pay homage to other admired painters.
The final decade of the century marks the transition to a new conception of the Cubist nature morte. Far more schematic than the oval format images, the new creations constitute a series of still lifes and fruit bowls with multiple variables both in the treatment of the image and in the graphic technique employed. In these examples, drawing and colour are disassociated: the linear warp constructs the drawing, emphasised at times by a line of shading, and the colour expands monochord over large surfaces, delimited by the drawing’s geometry, or is split into blocks of colour differentiated with all the combinations possible.
Inevitably, in the new millennium, his advance along this path that eventually schematises shapes so that they almost disappear, took Alfredo Alcain to abstraction. There now only existed lines and stains, intricate tangles or linear grids in an unceasing horror vacui. And in the end the ringing of the colour is what resounds with all its tonal chords.
The dibujos de teléfono are altogether something else, stemming from a habit that, as Alcain points out, is common to many painters. This quirk, which consists of scribbling on a paper until it is completely covered whilst talking on the phone, has provided a quite diverse assortment of drawings. They are not all equally spontaneous, as indeed some larger sized cards that Alcain placed at the side of the telephone point to a more conscious intention. There are even drawings that were intervened and coloured at a later moment.
Similarly, although the practice has not been so frequent, Alcain has produced some still lifes in bronze and a series of wooden sculpture objects that he calls “maderitas”, made as they are with pieces of slats and frames, such as El rascacielos, which can be seen in Sala Rekalde. All these sculptures are small format.
THE ARTIST
Alfredo Alcain (Madrid, 1936) studied at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid and continued his apprenticeship in engraving and lithography at the National School of Graphic Arts in the capital. His interest also turned to Cinema Decoration, which he studied at the National Cinema School in Madrid. Within that medium he collaborated on two films by Basilio Martín Patiño, Nueve cartas a Berta and Canciones para después de una guerra. In addition he is the author of the scenery and masks for Peter Fitzi and José Luís Gómez’s staging of El pupilo quiere ser autor by Peter Handke.
The list of exhibitions held is innumerable, both in museums and Spanish public institutions that possess work of his, and in private galleries. Amongst the numerous prizes he has received are the National Plastic Arts Award (2003) and theTomás Francisco Prieto Prize of the Museo Casa de la Moneda (2010).