ESTEBAN VICENTE

ESTEBAN VICENTE

(1903 - 2001)

28 JULY - 26 AUGUST 2022
MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to announce an exhibition of late paintings by Esteban Vicente. The artist’s seventh solo exhibition at the gallery will open on 28 July at 520 West 21st Street and remain on view through 2 September 2022. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated digital catalogue featuring an essay by Tom McGlynn.
Esteban Vicente, 1990s, Bridgehampton, New York
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Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, "Esteban Vicente," 28 July - 26 August 2022
ESTEBAN VICENTE

Meditative, 1993

Oil on canvas

42 x 50 inches

106.7 x 127 cm

"Esteban Vicente belonged to a generation of artists who were true believers in the salutary effects of abstract painting. As a first-generation Abstract Expressionist, he shared with colleagues such as Mark Rothko and Philip Guston a sense that the lyrical in abstract art has the potential to immediately address the heart, soul, and mind of the viewer. It’s a working idea that the candor of subjective sincerity might find a way to speak to the grandeur of objective truth."

- Tom McGlynn
- Esteban Vicente
  Instinctive, 1994
  Oil on canvas
  50 x 42 inches
  127 x 106.7 cm
- Esteban Vicente
  Four, 1996
  Oil on canvas
  52 x 42 inches
  132.1 x 106.7 cm
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ESTEBAN VICENTE

Untitled, 1996

Oil on canvas

50 x 42 inches

127 x 106.7 cm

“With "Untitled (1996)," the artist achieves such by counterpoising a familiar light red-orange and yellow arrangement in masses of elegantly tactile brush strokes, dividing the compositional ground in equal proportions from bottom to top. The haptic sense is exquisite in this work, as Vicente’s brush revels in the kind of incremental tonal transitions expressed in smoky hue transitions that are similar to the way in which Rothko delicately edged his stacked nimbi. That sophisticated touch is further extended via bio-geometric forms interposed in saturated greens and reds.”

- Tom McGlynn
Esteban Vicente, 1990s, Bridgehampton, New York
“He famously tended an extensive garden in his Bridgehampton, New York, home and studio, so such a horticultural inspiration is more likely than not. But it’s the translation of a transformative moment of beauty into a painting that presents a challenge to any artist. Vicente achieved this with an approach to abstraction that approximates the symbolic but then recedes back into a luxury of phenomenal plenitude.”

- Tom McGlynn
- Esteban Vicente
  NYC Landscape, 1997
  Oil on canvas
  52 x 42 inches
  132.1 x 106.7 cm
- Esteban Vicente
  Untitled #14, 1997
  Oil on canvas
  52 x 42 inches
  132.1 x 106.7 cm
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- Esteban Vicente
  Untitled #15, 1997
  Oil on canvas
  42 x 32 inches
  106.7 x 81.3 cm
- Esteban Vicente
  Forma Color, 1998
  Oil on canvas
  52 x 42 inches
  132.1 x 106.7 cm
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ESTEBAN VICENTE

Untitled #5, 1998

Oil on canvas

42 x 52 inches

106.7 x 132.1 cm

"His grounding in phenomenal form in nature surely guided Vicente’s subsequent development as a master of abstract form and set him up for creative longevity, as distinct from the evanescent gestures of many of his generation’s existential conceptions. Vicente’s abstract dramas were more outer directed. He had the stage management of a seasoned observer, which lent his ebullient improvisations their convincing mise en scène."

- Tom McGlynn
Esteban Vicente Studio, 2000, Bridgehampton, New York

"To the end, he remained an attentive pupil to what his paintings could teach. There’s a youthful, restless quality evident in the studious inventions of these late works. Perhaps the greatest lesson Vicente has left for us is the idée fixe of constant painterly evolution."

- Tom McGlynn
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Esteban Vicente, 1990s, Bridgehampton, New York

ESTEBAN VICENTE was born in Turégano, Spain in 1903. His father served in the Civil Guard, a police force in the Castile region and was an amateur painter who took the young Vicente with him on visits to the Prado Museum. In 1918, Vicente entered military school, but left after three months. At fifteen years old, Vicente began at the School of Fine Arts of the Real Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. As a young man living in Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris, he developed friendships with artists and writers. In 1928, he had his first exhibition with Juan Bonafé at the Ateneo de Madrid.

Vicente left Europe for New York City in 1936. The United States became the artist’s permanent home. His contemporaries and associates included Willem de Kooning (their 10th Street studios were on a shared floor), Elaine de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, and Ad Reinhardt.

Vicente spent a good portion of his career teaching. 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; and the University of California, Berkeley, CA, among other institutions.

In addition, he received numerous awards, some of them being the most prestigious given to an artist in the United States. His works can be found in important collections and museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N Y; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, among others.

At the end of his life, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente, a museum in his honor, was opened in Segovia by the Spanish government. Vicente attended the museum’s opening in 1998.

Vicente died at the age of 97 in 2001 in Bridgehampton, NY, ten days before his 98th birthday. He had a long and prosperous career, living and working with multiple generations of artists and painting well into his 90s at his home in Bridgehampton.

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ESTEBAN VICENTE

(1903 - 2001)

28 JULY - 26 AUGUST 2022