Angel Alonso

ANGEL ALONSO (Laredo, Cantabria, 1923- France, 1994).
Untitled.
Charcoal and pigments on cardboard plate pressed with cellulose.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by Patricia Ehrle.
Measurements: 105 x 78 cm; 110 x 83 cm (frame).
Angel Alonso, exiled in France since 1947, was a singular figure in contemporary painting. A close collaborator and friend of the philosopher María Zambrano, Alonso developed an artistic career marked by a radical expressiveness and a deep material exploration, characteristics that resonate in this piece.
According to art historian Francisco Jarauta, Alonso mastered with solvency the pictorial matter and technique that he himself had configured, allowing him to embody in his works the colors that most intensely obsessed him. His relationship with color was both conceptual and tactile: he approached it from the texture, overflowing the traditional limits of the canvas and merging it with natural elements such as earth, wood, stones or various objects incorporated directly into the work. As Marset points out, "the color surpasses the canvas, overflows the frames, erases or ignores the supports", thus reflecting a desire for visual and material expansion that defies the conventions of the pictorial format.
With a reserved temperament, Alonso deliberately kept a distance from the dynamics of the art market. In 1952 he refused to exhibit at the renowned Parisian gallery Jeanne Bucher, a decision that contributed to his production remaining on the margins of the commercial circuits, sustained only by the interest of a small circle of collectors. This position, added to his condition of exile, explains in part the scarce visibility that his work had in Spain for decades.
It was not until 1996 that the first major retrospective of his work was organized in Spain: Ángel Alonso (1923-1994), initially presented at the Marcelino Botín Foundation (Santander) and later toured to the Cervantes Institute in Paris and the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. In 1998, the René Metras Gallery in Barcelona hosted another relevant exhibition. Since then, his exhibition presence in Spain remained practically inactive until recently.
In 2009, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía acquired a significant body of his works, while the Ministry of Culture took custody of his personal archive -including writings, correspondence and documents- with a view to the future constitution of a foundation dedicated to his memory in Cantabria. Between 2013 and 2014, his legacy was the subject of an extensive retrospective exhibition at the L'Ar[T]señal museum in Dreux (France), thus consolidating the renewed critical interest in one of the most singular and radical figures of Spanish exile art.