Biography

Alfonso Fraile was a Spanish painter. He was born in Marchena, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 in 1930 and died in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 in 1988. He studied at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes, located in San Fernando de Henares

San Fernando de Henares, Madrid

San Fernando de Henares is a municipality in Spain, in the province and autonomous community of Madrid.It has an area of 39.9 km² and 36,244 inhabitants.Its agrigultural products include olives, cereals, vegetables, cattle and wool...

, Spain.

Work

Fraile's early work can be described as a form of cubism, which trended towards greater abstraction

Abstraction

Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....

, and even primitivism

Primitivism

Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...

, as his career progressed. In his later work he tended to minimize his subjects, isolating them in space, and working with broad swatches of bright colors, strong line and energetic brush work. He often explored a composition multiple times, often serially on a single canvas, at other times on several canvasses, in varying palettes.

Fraile held his first one-man show in Madrid in 1957, exhibiting his abstract pictures.

In collaboration with Joseph Vento Ruiz, and Medina and Julio Martín-Caro, Fraile founded the group, "Nuevo Espacialismo," reintroducing the figure with a narrative emphasis, citing the abstract expressionist

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 painter Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

 as one of their influences. Fraile was particularly interested, at that time, in the unflinching realism of Goya

Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...

.

Awards

National Art Award, 1962

Critics Award University of Madrid, 1963

National Arts Award, 1983

Exhibitions

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon), 1986. Group exhibition. "Spanish Expressionists."

Museo Juan Bartolo (Gijón), 1994

Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid), 1998/99, Retrospective.

(among others)

External links

• http://www.picassomio.es/AlfonsoFraile.html
• http://www.masdearte.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6622&Itemid=7