The lyrical collages and polychromatic sculptures of the famous abstract expressionist painter Esteban Vicente are being shown together for the first time at a major gallery in the United States, in an exhibition which once again examines the career of this "artists’ artist" on the tenth anniversary of his death in 2001. Concrete Improvisations presents some 60 works on paper and 20 small-scale sculptures drawn from public and private collections in Spain and the United States.
Esteban Vicente was the only Spanish-born painter to form an integral part of the first generation of abstract expressionist artists in New York. His dedication to collage, along with his contemplative and deliberate vision of the technique, set him apart from most of his peers of the New York School. Vicente's collages accounted for more than half his yearly artistic output. Esteban Vicente began creating collages, which he referred to as "concrete improvisations" in 1949, and continued with the technique throughout his career, up until his death more than five decades later. The medium offered him an alternative, but also a means to experiment with the colours, textures and forms that lie at the heart of his painting.
He also produced small sculptures, which he referred to as "entertainments", improvising with pieces of leftover wood and scraps scattered around his studio. These sculptures, which were not intended for public display, are the fruit of reflexive and yet light-hearted improvisations. They exude a whimsical sense of immediacy, bearing witness to the artist's ability to transfer the formal achievements developed in his paintings and collages to a three-dimensional medium.
