Esteban Vicente Perez

ESTEBAN VICENTE PÉREZ (Turégano, Segovia, 1903 - New York, 2001).
Untitled, 1956-1960.
Collage and oil on paper.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 20 x 24 cm; 29 x 34 cm (frame).
The constant attention that Esteban Vicente paid to collage, together with the reflexive and conscious way in which he approached this technique, placed him in a singular position within the New York School. These works were not a secondary exercise, but an essential part of his production, coming to represent approximately half of his annual work. Vicente began exploring collage in 1949, which he referred to as "concrete improvisations," and he maintained this practice uninterruptedly for more than fifty years, until the end of his career. For the artist, collage became both an alternative means of creation and a space for formal research, where he tested combinations of color, texture and form that formed the basis of his pictorial language.
Esteban Vicente was the only Spanish artist who was part of the first generation of abstract expressionists in New York, actively participating in some of the most decisive events of the city's art scene in the late forties and early fifties. He was present at key exhibitions such as Talent 1950 (Kootz Gallery, New York, 1950) and, especially, 9th Street (New York, 1951), an exhibition that internationally consecrated the first generation of the New York School. In that creative environment he became friends with fundamental figures of the art and critics of the time, such as Harold Rosenberg and Thomas B. Hess, as well as with artists of the New York School. Hess, as well as with artists of the stature of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, among many others.
It was not until 1987, more than five decades after his move to the United States, that Esteban Vicente was able to inaugurate his first exhibition in his native country, at the Fundación Banco Exterior de España in Madrid. From then on, his work began to be shown continuously in private galleries and in important public institutions, such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid or the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern in Valencia.
In 1998 the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art was inaugurated in Segovia, which today houses a fundamental part of his artistic legacy. His work also forms part of the collections of the world's leading contemporary art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Smithsonian in Washington D. C., the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, among others.