Juan Alcalde

“ Paintings by Juan Alcalde ”

We present a new exhibition of paintings by Juan Alcalde in our gallery.

At almost 85, Juan Alcalde is the last living member of the Spanish School of Paris, and this time we present his most recent works, that allow us to confirm that nowadays his painting is still relevant.

Alcalde is part of a generation torn by the Spanish Civil War: he fought on the Republican side, something that lead him to be sent to the French concentration camps before he could leave for exile in Paris, His stay in the French capital was short as he decided to move to Venezuela, where he would stay until 1960, when he would move back to Paris and rekindles his friendship with Joaquin Peinado, Hernando Viñes or Baltasar Lobo. He won’t return to Spain until the end of the dictatorship, when he settles in Madrid in the early 1980s.

Alcalde is a different painter among his contemporaries from Paris. Like them, he had the chance of knowing the avantgardes firsthand, but the influence they had in his work is scarce, his work has stayed in a expressionist figuration that is a rarity among his generation. His painting is closer to the work of Edvard Munch that to Picasso’s, but despite this, he wasn’t aware of the work of the Norwegian until the late 1960s, when his style was fully developed.

The current exhibition features some of the cities of the artist’s life such as Madrid, Paris, New York, Rome or Stockholm in the form of landscaped dominated by the use of white colour, that, when he uses it, acquires an infinity of shades. In these paintings by Juan Alcalde also presents some of his typical mysterious or tormented characters, as well as his still lifes or, as he calls them “cacharros” (pots and pans).

The exhibition of paintings by Juan Alcalde will remain open until October 31^st,