20th Century Spanish

Alcolea dropped out of university, where he was studying Law, to devote himself to his true vocation of painting. Influenced by the tenets of , in the early 1970s he forged an unmistakably personal figurative style that was the result of fusing a complex and ambiguous spatial construction with a recreation of distorted figures and objects and overflowing colour.

He had his first solo exhibition in 1971 at Galería Amadís in Madrid.

As preparations for his oil paintings or as truly compelling works in their own right, he made countless drawings which he executed using the technique of automatism. His engagement with psychoanalysis also led to the persistent presence of obscure personal references in his works. In fact, his practice is permeated by an enigmatic coldness which is layered on top of a parallel process of drawing and writing where his individual streak of irony is more clearly visible.

In 1992 he was posthumously awarded Spain’s National Visual Arts Prize. In 1998, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea organised survey shows of his work. Apart from painting, he also penned several essays on painting theory, such as Aprender a nadar (1980).