Juan Alcalde (1918-2020) - Stockholm

Juan Alcalde was a Spanish painter and printmaker whose work was marked by solitude, visual poetry, and expressionism with a melancholy air. From a very young age he studied art in Madrid, at the School of Arts and Trades and at the prestigious San Fernando Academy, but the Civil War cut short his training. From then on he would live a long exile that would take him to France and Venezuela, where he consolidated his artistic career.
In the French capital, he linked with the Escuela Española de París, although his painting followed a personal, 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 with subtle tints.
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 solo and collective, helped to expand his international recognition.
Alcalde’s work is distinguished by simplified forms, soft contours, and schematic compositions that convey introspective sensitivity. Criticism has consistently 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 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 into the purest emotionality, painted with the wisdom and stillness of a creator who looks from silence.