Alonso Angel Original Signed Lithograph Abstract Art Abstraction Spain

  
Original lithograph Signed at the bottom right. Numbered out of 100 copies. Size 69 x 51 cm. Angel Alonso is a painter.

French, of Spanish origin, born on . His work revolves around a reflection on color and material. He stayed away from the art market for almost 20 years, in order to preserve the integrity of his work.

He is the father of Stephanie Alonso, and Thierry Alonso Engraver.

Early years: Escape from Francoist Spain and settling in France. After a few years of self-taught training, Alonso left Spain. Indeed, between 1938 and 1939, Angel Alonso was arrested at only 17 years old, imprisoned and sentenced to death after the fall of Bilbao to the Francoists. His family filed an appeal for clemency, which was accepted due to his young age. He returned home but a few months later, was arrested again for desertion, as he had not completed his military service. He was then deported to the island of Fuerteventura. He escaped and, after a period of hiding, he crossed the French border in 1947. He then definitively left Spain to join Paris.

And especially Nicolas de Staël. They often found themselves in their respective works. Guy Dumur in Nicolas de Staël, le combat avec l'ange, mentions: "He [de Staël] associates with known people. Georges Braque, first and foremost, whom he sees regularly, André Lanskoy, as mentioned before, a young Spanish painter, Angel Alonso. In addition to these initial pictorial influences, he is attracted to color and collages.

In 1950, he was threatened with extradition to Francoist Spain by the French authorities. A support committee was formed, including Michel Leiris.

He only obtained French nationality in 1971 thanks to the support of his father-in-law, Roger Rigaud, former vice-president of the Paris Council. In 1952, Alonso declined to exhibit at the prestigious Jeanne Bûcher gallery out of "modesty.

" Indeed, he felt that his young age did not allow him to claim such an exhibition. In 1955, he exhibited at the André Schoëller gallery, which at that time represented artists such as Rebeyrolle, Fautrier, Messagier, Duvillier, Gnoli, Arroyo. From this exhibition, his materials became denser. From 1957-58, he painted a series of canvases inspired by Turner's painting The Funeral at Sea by Sir David Wilkie. These were the years of his fraternal encounter with Maria Zambrano, who introduced him to Cioran.

The latter in 1987 described Alonso as the "last French painter." In light of these encounters, Alonso embarked on his own path. In 1952, he settled in Genainvillier, near Chartres, which became, from that moment on, his place of reflection and research, mainly focused on color.

In 1958, he worked with leaves, apples, trunks, and branches, obsessed with the multiple aspects of plant sensations. He talked a lot with Tal-Coat, who, too, was constantly experimenting. In 1956, after living in Paris, at 49 Rue de Rennes, Angel Alonso moved to La Laurencie, his wife Monique Rigaud's family property in Limousin. They welcomed many of their friends, including poets Yves de Bayser. Suzane Tézenas, a famous patron, and the man of letters and critic Guy Dumur.

It was there that Alonso began to delve into work on material and landscape.

The 60s-70s: The challenge to the art market and the affirmation of an innovative pictorial language. From 1960 and for over twenty years, Alonso stayed practically away from the art market.

He devoted himself to painting as a spiritual necessity, always in touch with the earth and nature. These were intense years marked by a gradual return to the essential, which was reflected mainly in color and materials. He began a series of large black paintings composed of charcoal powder, burnt vegetation, straw, foliage, and earth, giving the painting a unique consistency and intensity. Simultaneously, he created other works on wood, cardboard, or paper, continuing his research and reflection on color. One early morning, almost at dawn, Alonso was awakened by the smell of smoke from burning fields. He went to the farm gate of La Chapelle and saw that the fire was advancing towards the house. At first, he was afraid, but then realizing that it was just field work, he stayed to enjoy the spectacle. When the fire went out, it was an absolute vision: the black earth, like a carpet, he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life." he thought, and he began to roam the blackened fields, stacking burned grass and charcoal. He took bags and put ashes in them without touching them.

The forms, the plant skeleton, remained intact; the fire destroyed the bodies without decomposing their silhouette. That's how it all started for Alonso. It was the initial period, around 1963, of the large coals and vast spaces of mud or burnt earth, where all the possibilities of black color shine, vibrate, from dry to wet, from the brightest to the densest darkness. The unique source of inspiration for Angel Alonso has always been the landscape.

It was at the center of daily discussions that brought the young painter together with Pierre Tal-Coat, his friend, his spiritual father. They walked through the majestic forest of Lions, stopping every quarter of an hour to draw and exchange their views on how to see a landscape. Since Tal-Coat's death, Alonso's sensitive universe has focused on the vast fields surrounding his home in Genainvilliers in Eure. For Alonso, the earth is the most beautiful of landscapes. This led him to work the earth itself. Echoing these earth surfaces, color must be an expanse, color is landscape. Therefore, it is understandable why Alonso rejects any artifice aimed at creating depth, rejects any tone gradient. He seeks color as it is and not as it appears to us, a color of such truth that it transcends the strict limits of the frame.

The 80s: The development of a definitive body of work. From the 1980s onwards, he exhibited works at the H-M Gallery (185 Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris), which already regularly featured Pierre Tal-Coat. In 1982, he returned to Paris, to Tal-Coat's former studio, which the latter made available to him.

He alternated between stays in Genainvilliers and Rue Brézin for a long time. That year, he exhibited at the Cahiers d'Art gallery. In these works, color constitutes the landscape itself. With exceptional mastery of materials, he did not hesitate to invent his reds, greens, yellows, oranges...

That burst from the porous surface of his paintings. Between 1986 and 1989, he held several exhibitions at the Barbier Gallery. The reds, whites, and yellows spread across the canvas, interspersed with interruptions of space, pushing the color to the extremes of the painting.

In these works, he set aside the good relations and influences of his friend Tal-Coat, as well as the path opened by Matisse. He opted for a more radical requirement that subordinates his pictorial language to an essential writing in which matter and color come together definitively. "He masters the material and technique that he has given himself and through which he succeeds in giving substance to the colors that obsess him the most. In the application of color, Alonso plays with the hardness and texture of the material; he introduces elements that refer to the landscape of Genainvilliers, the work of the peasants, or the gesture of the artist fixing the color on the canvas.

It is for this reason that he sometimes leaves the spatula or the small piece of wood he used to spread the color on the canvas. In 1987, Juan Carlos Marset, a Spanish intellectual and academic, close to Maria Zambrano, met Angel Alonso during his research on the philosopher and realized the crucial importance of Alonso's work. A major retrospective was then organized in Spain, where Alonso's entire studio was transported for the occasion.

Towards the end of the 80s, Alonso was plagued by serious health concerns and was forced to settle permanently on Rue Brézin. In May 89, at Lannec hospital, he wrote the poem Beauté Cadavre. The Désastres series, exhibited in 1992 at the Sapone Gallery in Nice, represents the culmination of his last research. He once again abandoned his yellows, greens, and earth tones to return to black and white as a last refuge in which he felt safe. His last paintings, small formats -possible sketches for a time that will never come- complete the journey of his work and his life.

Angel Alonso's sudden death in Paris, on . Turned the retrospective into a tribute in the form of an exhibition. It took place in France, at the Institut Cervantes (Paris, 1996), and in Spain at the Fundacion Marcelino Botin (Santander, August-September 1996), Circulo de Bellas Artes (Madrid, January 1997). In 2009, the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid) acquired a significant number of his works, while the Spanish state received his archives (writings, correspondence, documents), with the prospect of creating a foundation in Santander. In 2013, the Artsenal de Dreux hosted the exhibition Àngel Alonso, bringing together the painter's works for the first time in almost 20 years.

2014: Sept 10 - Nov. 8 Twenty years after Angel Alonso's passing, the Michel Soskine Inc. gallery (Madrid-New York) pays tribute to the artist with the first exhibition in a gallery in Madrid of a selection of selected works, some of which are major.