168 - "BONIFACIO" ALFONSO (San Sebastian, 1934 - 2011).

"BONIFACIO" ALFONSO (San Sebastian, 1934 - 2011). "Untitled", 1989. Mixed media on cardboard. Signed and signed in the lower left corner. Measurements: 70 x 50 cm, 95 x 74,50 cm (frame). Bonifacio's convulsive figuration is expressed in this composition populated by his characteristic biomorphic creatures, freely inspired by his insect collections, and formally related to the works of Arshile Gorky, Matta or Wilfredo Lam. Fond of drawing since his childhood, he began his artistic career in 1955, once he abandoned his incipient career as a bullfighter. That year he won first prize in a painting competition in San Sebastian with a cubist-influenced composition, which encouraged him to enter the School of Arts and Crafts, from which he was soon expelled. After various and disparate occupations, he began to work as a draftsman in an advertising studio. His friendship with the painter Julio García Sanz allows him to refine the rudiments of his pictorial craft. In 1958 he held his first individual exhibition, which took place at the Ateneo de Guipuzcoa in San Sebastian. After a short experience in Paris, where he met Mompó, Cuixart and Saura, among others, he settled in Bilbao, where he came into contact with the Grises gallery, a space where the artists of El Paso usually exhibited in the Biscayan capital, and where he presented several solo exhibitions in the second half of the 1960s. Encouraged by Fernando Zobel, in 1968 he decides to move to Cuenca, where he establishes a close professional relationship with Antonio Lorenzo, who introduces him to the techniques of engraving. In 1970 he signed a contract with the Juana Mordó gallery, to which he remained linked until the beginning of the 90s. During the 70's his painting is enriched; without renouncing the graphic value of the drawing, he reinforces the intense emotional charge that emerges from his works through a greater attention to the chromatic treatment of his compositions, more evident in the figures than in the backgrounds. After a brief period of greater variegation in his work, which coincides with extended stays in Mexico, in 1989, when he moved to Madrid, he was commissioned to design twenty-six stained glass windows for the Cathedral of Cuenca, in a project in which Gerardo Rueda and Gustavo Torner, among others, were also invited to participate. With more than thirty original editions, the quality and originality of his production earned him the National Engraving Prize, awarded by the Calcografía Nacional in 1993.