Juan Alcalde (1918-2020) - Stockholm

Juan Alcalde was a Spanish painter and printmaker who developed a body of work marked by solitude, visual poetry, and expressionism with a melancholic air. From a very young age he studied art in Madrid, at the School of Arts and Crafts and at the prestigious San Fernando Academy, but the Civil War truncated his training. From then he would lead a long exile that would take him to France and Venezuela, where he solidified his artistic career.

In the French capital, he connected with the Spanish School of Paris, although his painting followed a personal and expressionist path, with solitary urban scenes, introspective figures, and still lifes that he called “cacharros,” always radiating mystery, silence, and a palette dominated by ochres, blues, grays, and whites nuanced.

His first exhibition was in 1940, and during the following decades he exhibited in different places, such as Caracas, Puerto Rico, Madrid, Paris, Bilbao, and London. These shows, both individual and collective, helped expand his international recognition.

Alcalde’s work is distinguished by simplified forms, soft contours, and schematic compositions that convey introspective sensitivity. Critics have always emphasized the lyrical and essentialist character of his painting, often described as “poetic and naked.”

In 2016, at more than 95 years old, he was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Spanish Association of Painters and Sculptors, a well-deserved recognition of a career filled with dedication and authenticity.

Juan Alcalde returned definitively to Madrid in the eighties. Throughout his life he maintained a moving artistic coherence: his work continues to be regarded as a window to pure emotion, painted with the wisdom and stillness of a creator who looks from silence.