Alfonso Albacete

ALFONSO ALBACETE (Antequera, Málaga, 1950).
"Luminaria II 04". 1995.
Acrylic on canvas.
Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 41 x 36 cm.; 49 x 44 cm.(frame).
Alfonso Albacete was formed with Juan Bonafé in Murcia, where he spent his first years. Later he will continue his pictorial studies at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Valencia, to finally study Architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Madrid, studies that he finished in 1977. During his time in Madrid, he will get to know first hand the work of the great Spanish artists, both classical and contemporary. Three years later, in 1980, he received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture in the category of Plastic Arts. Painter and engraver, he develops a language based on an expressive chromatism, close to American abstraction and even pop art, standing on the border between figuration and abstraction. Since the beginning of the nineties, an iconography begins in his plastic art that will be from then on constant in his production: the human figure, the still life and the landscape. In his first paintings, made in the seventies, he still uses a realistic figurative language, which soon, however, will become increasingly abstract and expressive, relying on a systematic and constructive brushstroke. Albacete held his first individual exhibition in 1972, at the Chys Gallery in Murcia, where he would exhibit again in 1973 and 1976. In 1973 he took part in the Young Art Competition Exhibition at the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery in Seville, and in 1975 he presented himself in Madrid with a personal exhibition held at the Egam Gallery. Also during these years he made the international leap, holding solo exhibitions at the Museum of the Chilean Resistance (1977) and the Salon au Palais de Glace in Paris (1978). Since then he has held solo exhibitions in leading galleries and museums in Spain, in centers such as the MEIAC in Badajoz (2007) or the Marlborough Gallery in Madrid, which currently represents him. He has also shown his work individually in other important Spanish galleries, among them Windsor in Bilbao, Séiquer in Madrid and Miguel Marcos in Barcelona. Likewise, Albacete has taken part in group exhibitions in Spain, Poland, Russia, Monaco and Greece, among other countries in Europe and America, in such prominent places as the Sofia Imber Museum of Modern Art in Caracas (1992) or the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow (2011), and has participated in the Arco and Estampa fairs in Madrid, ArtCologne in Germany and Arte Fiera (Bologna). Likewise, in 1988 the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art dedicated its first retrospective exhibition to him. He was awarded the D'Achtall Observatory Award for Plastic Arts (2013), and in 2007 he made the sculptural ensemble "Oratholos" in Murcia. Armando Montesinos and Francisco Vivó González have dedicated their doctoral theses to him (2000 and 2002), and he is currently represented in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the White House Collection in Washington, the CAAM in Las Palmas, the ARTIUM in Vitoria, the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca, the collections of Dobe (Zurich), Banco de España, Telefónica, La Caixa and Chase Manhattan Bank, the Mie Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan and the Wurth Museum in Germany, among others.