ESTEBAN VICENTE
Poetic Sight
June 6 – September 13, 2009
Esteban Vicente
Esteban Vicente was born in 1903 in Turégano (Segovia), his family shortly afterward moving to Madrid. In 1921 he entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, at first with the aim of learning sculpture, but later turning to painting. His time in Madrid involved friendships and contacts with the likes of García Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rafael Alberti, Luis Buñuel, Juan Bonafé or the Pole Wladyslaw Jahl. His aesthetic ideas linked him with the so-called arte nuevo, whose main promoter was Juan Ramón Jiménez. This was the visual arts counterpart to the poetry of the Generation of `27, and it was in fact in two literary reviews, Verso y Prosa and Mediodía, that Vicente published his first drawings. He moved to Paris in 1929, getting to know, among others, Picasso, Dufy and Max Ernst. A period in Barcelona brought him various exhibitions, and, finally, a scholarship from the further education authority, allowing him to spend time in Paris. In 1935 he lived for several months in a small international colony of artists in Ibiza. At that time his painting had sketch-like characteristics, with pale, melancholy colours, typical of the so-called Paris School. We can nevertheless find in it the structural rigour and deliberate understatement which characterize all of his work.
In 1936, with his American wife, he moved to the United States. After a short period working in the Consulate of the Spanish Republic in Philadelphia, he became fully involved in the New York visual arts scene. He obtained US nationality in 1940, and began a process of artistic evolution, on the basis of his interest in cubism and his contacts with abstract expressionists, leading to his own movement toward abstraction. During this time he made friends with artists like Rothko, De Kooning, Pollock, Kline and Newman, as well as with the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas B Hess. In 1950, after almost a decade without exhibiting, he made his reappearance when selected by the organizers of “New Talents 1950”, Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro. He was also one of the organizers and participants of the “9th Street” exhibition in 1951, which for the first time brought together artists who would become known as the first generation of the New York School. His personal style consists of chromatic harmonies built upon structures which are either vaguely geometric, or evocative of a landscape. Throughout his life, Esteban Vicente was also an important teacher in some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the USA, among them the legendary Black Mountain College (with Merce Cunningham and John Cage), the universities of New York, Princeton and Berkeley, and, as founder-member at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. He won some of the most prestigious awards to be bestowed on visual artists in the United States, and his work is to be found in the most important museums and collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim.
In recent years, Spain has given him ample recognition. The first step was his Medalla de Oro de las Bellas Artes, awarded by His Majesty the King in 1991. In 1998 he was awarded the Premio de las Artes by the executive authority of the Castilla y León region, and in the same year a large anthological exhibition was opened in Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía, while, under the auspices of the Segovia provincial government, this Museum was opened. In 1999, Esteban Vicente and his wife, Harriet G Vicente, received the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Alfonso X el Sabio, and in the Museo Reina Sofía a room was opened to be permanently devoted to him. All this, together with his participation in important exhibitions, has ensured Esteban Vicente and his work their rightful place in twentieth-century Spanish culture.
On 11 January 2001, just before his 98th birthday, Esteban Vicente died at his home in Bridgehampton, Long Island. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes lie alongside those of his wife in the Museum garden in Segovia.
The permanent collection
The museum houses an outstanding collection of 153 works, generously donated by the painter Esteban Vicente and his wife Harriet G Vicente. This legacy consists of 48 oil paintings, 27 collages, 51 drawings, 4 watercolours, 16 small sculptures, 1 tapestry, 2 lithographs and 4 silkscreen prints. The collection fully covers the painter’s development and the various stages of his work from 1925 to 2000.
The collection is still being enhanced by the donations of artists who have contributed to projects of the Museum
Sponsored by The Harriet and Esteban Vicente Foundation.