ALFREDO ALCAIN
The figure of Alcain stands out in the Spanish artistic panorama from the 70s, a decade that attended the revival of figurative language and the different possibilities that it gave to analyze, represent and criticize the society and the political oppression of those years. In these circumstances, Alcain configures an art style that was very personal, halfway between realism and pop art, nourished by an iconography that catered to both traditional and popular, and all through a language seemingly simple, subtly ironic and decidedly modern.
The evolution of Alcain, from the series traditionalFacades and storefronts, Embroidery pétit-point, Still lifes, etc) until the last (Numbers, Letters, Intersecting), has explained himself: "there Was a moment at the end of the nineties in the still-lifes are thinning in such a way and so are schematic, the fruit and fruits are disappearing and all that remains are the lines and color. Little by little, the figure disappears, and from then on you will be developing an aesthetic of lines and spots that comes up right now."
As here delimited, in that type of work that Alcain titled as Lines and spots, place the last work that Alcain has been ongoing since 2012. Paintings that share common elements to all of his work, as his predilection for the line and the drawing, the expressiveness of color, and the neatness and clarity in its execution. However, there are now virtually no reason figurative, but a tendency to occupy the entire pictorial space through a succession of geometric forms that develop from seemingly whimsical and haphazard. This trend towards a formal and abstract, rather than to situate his work in the current of the classic geometric abstraction, turns it into a simple system and easy that allows you to express yourself and to get to paint the painting, without a trace visible of which is not the simple fact of painting.
Alcain studied painting at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando between 1953 and 1958; he studied Engraving and Lithography at the National School of Graphic Arts between 1957 and 1963, and Decorative Film at the National School of Cinematography between 1961 and 1964. All of them in Madrid, a city where he exhibited for the first time in 1962. Since that year, has exhibited continuously in most galleries and art centers of Spain. In 2003, he received the National Prize of Plastic Arts, and in 2010 the Prize Tomás Francisco Prieto –Casa de la Moneda, Madrid. The first time I worked with the family Fernández-Braso was in 1971, at the inaugural exhibition of the gallery-library Hopscotch in the street Guardian of Madrid. It was a collective exhibition titled "A proposition realistic", which involved other artists such as Alberto Heart, Gordillo and Orcajo.