ESTEBAN VICENTE
ESTEBAN VICENTE
520 West 21st Street
16 July - 28 August 2020
Selected Works
Press Release
NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by Esteban Vicente. The show will open on 16 July at 520 West 21st Street and will remain on view through 29 August 2020. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring a text by Angela H. Brown.
The late paintings of Esteban Vicente epitomize the continued influence of his native Spain through his time spent in Bridgehampton, New York. He closely studied shape, light and the possibilities of pigment in his flower garden, at his beloved home since 1964.
The paintings selected for this exhibition are significant examples of his use of color to illustrate perceived landscapes and light. Vaguely defined forms frame his canvases, while hazy veils of blue, deep oranges and subtle yellows introduce a sense of depth and place. The grouping is an affirmation of Vicente’s pursuit of abstraction and his desire to revisit and rework forms until his final days.
As Angela H. Brown notes in her scholarly essay Accumulations of Experience: Color, Camouflage, and Esteban Vicente’s Abstract Legacy, “Vicente was adamant about two things: the close observation of color, and the creation of a unique visual language. He wanted his students to be able to capture the hues and tones around them in order to produce new and productive vocabularies.”
Additionally, Angela H. Brown writes, “Vicente’s teaching offered a generation of students access to the blurry zone between color and object, between academic formalism and the almost magical way in which the canvas can become a dispositif of lived experience.” He was among the faculty at Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, NC; the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, New York, NY; the University of California, Berkeley, CA and the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR.
ESTEBAN VICENTE is regarded as one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionsim. He had a long and prosperous career, living and working with multiple generations of artists and painting well into his 90’s at his home in Bridgehampton, New York. He received numerous prestigious awards throughout his lifetime including the Gold Medal of Honor in the Fine Arts awarded by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia in 1991. The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente, was opened in Segovia, Spain in 1998. His works can be found in major museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA and the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL among others.
