Alfredo Alcaín (1936) - Bodegón

Alfredo Alcaín（マドリード、1936年生） Original etching by etching and aquatint, 1987. Signed and dated in pencil “A. Alcaín. 87” bottom right and numbered 57/100 bottom left.

Sheet 75 × 55.5 cm, laid drawing paper with a marked grain, with the imprint of the printing plate clearly visible.

A fruit bowl split into triangles, like a puzzle. At the top, grapes, green beans, an orange and a pear overflow the bowl; in a black triangle floats the white silhouette of another pear. Below, a gray aquatint matrix on which Alcaín has drawn cherries, strawberries, watermelons and bananas in outline, with a large pear reserved in the center. A frieze of tiny objects, palm trees, towers, clouds and fruit frames the scene from above and along the sides. The aquatint provides the granulated gray of the background; the etching, the fine line and stippling.

Alcaín studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (1953–1958) and later etching and lithography at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Gráficas de Madrid, in addition to decoration at the Escuela Nacional de Cinematografía. The printmaking has been one of his most constant media. In the sixties and seventies he worked between pop art and critical realism, with a distinctly Madrid popular accent. In the eighties he incorporated cubist references and plays between plane and volume: this 1987 fruit bowl is a good example of that period. National Prize for Plastic Arts in 2003. His work is in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao and the Museo del Grabado de Buenos Aires, among other collections.

Condition: good. Wide and clean margins. slight natural waviness of the paper. No tears or folds.

Provenance: private collection, Madrid.