Bonifacio Alfonso Gómez

"BONIFACIO"; BONIFACIO ALFONSO GÓMEZ FERNÁNDEZ, (San Sebastián, 1934 - 2011).
Untitled, 2001.
Ink drawings on paper (x3).
Signed, dated and dedicated.
Measurements: 25 x 17 cm; 29 x 21 cm; 49 x 80 cm (frame).
Fond of drawing and painting since he was a child, Bonifacio lived a hard childhood in the Casa de Misericordia of his hometown, after his father was shot in 1936. From his adolescence he was forced to work in all kinds of jobs to survive, without being able to devote himself fully to his passion for painting. During these years he focused especially on bullfighting, until a goring made him abandon bullfighting for good. As for his artistic work, in 1954 Bonifacio obtained his first recognition, the First Prize of Painting of San Sebastian, for his work "Cristo Cubista", and in 1955 he entered the School of Arts and Crafts of that city, to finally begin his artistic training. Two years later, in 1957, he began to devote himself exclusively to painting. In 1958 he held his first individual exhibition in Guipúzcoa, and that same year he traveled to Paris with Rafael Ruiz Balerdi, coming into contact there with Mompó, Cuixart and Saura, among others. After a season exhibiting at the Ateneo Guipuzcoano and at the Aranaz Darrás gallery, in 1966 he finally achieved commercial success at the Grises gallery in Bilbao, where the artists of El Paso used to exhibit. Around this time he meets Fernando Zóbel, who buys several paintings for the Museum of Abstract Art in Cuenca and encourages him to move to that city. In this city he will come into contact with the Spanish avant-garde, establishing relationships with prominent artists such as Saura, José Guerrero and Zóbel, with whom he will work and hold exhibitions. He will therefore be very close to the Cuenca Group, although his work moves away from the aesthetic formalism of the latter from the beginning to take a personal path of expressionist features, closer to international avant-garde movements such as the CoBrA group or Willem de Kooning. Already during these years, we can appreciate in his painting the forceful line that will mark his language, determining broken, decomposed or unfinished figures, and combined with a fluid and dynamic color, based on stains. Since then he will be known both in Spain and abroad. Bonifacio will be part of the group of artists related to the Juana Mordó gallery, which presented him at the Basel and Cologne fairs. His definitive consecration would come in the seventies and eighties. Praised by Jorge Oteiza, Bonifacio received awards such as the National Engraving Prize in 1993 or the Arts Prize of the Community of Madrid in 2005. In 2007 the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid dedicated a wide retrospective to him, accompanied by the documentary "La cicatriz de la pintura" (The scar of painting). Bonifacio is currently represented in the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español de Cuenca and in the Fundación Antonio Pérez, among other collections.