Alfonso Abelenda

ALFONSO ABELENDA ESCUDERO (La Coruña, 1931-2019).
"Bullfighters. The Fiesta", 1986.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 130 x 120 cm; 151 x 140 cm (frame).

In this work, of satirical and carefree tone, Alfonso Abelenda composes a choral portrait formed by bullfighters and prostitutes, in addition to a picador and a character wearing a wide-brimmed hat. With a colorful language and saturated tones with which he describes the tinsel of the bullfighting costumes that contrast with the almost complete nudity of the women, the Galician painter challenges the romantic notions of Spanish tradition. In particular, he distorts bullfighting as a national sport and the notion of "Fiesta", associating it with a visit to a whorehouse. The picador reaches out his hand as if he wants to touch the breast of the woman sitting astride him, but the gesture looks ridiculous as he finds himself minuscule before the monumentality of the prostitute whose only garment is a stocking with a garter belt. Apart from ridiculing cultural archetypes, the author could also be exploring the tensions between the idealized (the heroism of bullfighting) and the marginal or forbidden in society. The result is a vibrant pictorial game.

Born into a family with an artistic tradition, he attended Antón García Patiño's classes in A Coruña until 1949, when he enrolled in the School of Architecture in Madrid. There he began as a painter, attending the classes of Gutiérrez Navas and studying statue and wash at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1954 he held his first exhibition in the bookstore of Lino Perez in his hometown, with considerable success, while forming a group with the painters Labra, Lago Rivera and Tenreiro; regular collaborators of Atlantida, a magazine that was a pioneering attempt at avant-garde affirmation in an oppressively provincial context. He does his military service in Morocco, exhibiting in Tetuan, Tangier and Rabat. He travels around Europe, exhibiting in London and Paris in the early 60's and takes part in the historical collective of Galician artists "20 pintores galegos", promoted by the first Galician cultural group O'Galo, at the Hostal dos Reis Católicos in Santiago de Compostela. He then settled in Madrid, where he worked as a decorative designer for the Brussels and New York world fairs and for the Bidasoa porcelain factory, among others. He returned to Galicia in the mid 70's, where he soon began to receive tributes and tributes. In 1972, the publishing house Planeta published a very curious book with a marked satirical character, El Abelendario, republished at the beginning of 2014 by Librería Arenas in A Coruña. His work, at first with a marked expressionist tinge, deformed images and violent colors, follows the path of an evolution in which his activity as a humorous and satirical cartoonist is very important. This deforming, distorted and bittersweet vision of reality is applied to his oil paintings and his stories of strong chromatic and formal expressiveness. In recent years the landscape, with a predilection for urban corners near the sea, has become a common theme. With a synthetic formal language, of rapid brushstrokes and full of matter, he constructs his objects, buildings, boats and people. His work is preserved in the Afundación Art Collection, in the Collection of the María José Jove Foundation, in the Collection of the Torre-Pujales Foundation - Museum of Contemporary Art of the Costa da Morte, in the Collection of Contemporary Art "Andante", in the Collection of the Provincial Government of A Coruña, in the Collection of Contemporary Art Gas Natural Fenosa, in the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of A Coruña, etcetera.