20th-21st Century. Spanish

Bonifacio Alfonso is one of the key players in twentieth-century abstraction in the Basque Country. Imbued with a highly personal language, his works boast a particular expressionist style, defined by subjectivism. Born on 19 June 1933 in San Sebastian, in his youth Bonifacio worked in several trades, including waiter, apprentice matador, signwriter and painter-decorator, and even drummer in a jazz band. That said, his interest in art gradually led him to dedicate himself full time to painting.

In 1955, after recovering from a wound when he was gored by a bull, he won first prize in the San Sebastian Painting Competition. That same year he enrolled at the city’s School of Arts and Crafts to further his knowledge of painting. This period would be crucial both for his training and for his relationship with two major figures of non-figurative Basque art: Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003) and Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002). Three years later, in 1958, he had his first solo exhibition at Ateneo Guipuzcoano and then moved to Paris, like so many other Spanish artists, where he discovered the avant-garde movements of the time. In 1966 Bonifacio settled in Bilbao, where he would remain until 1968. In those years the artist created an abstract painting with Informalista undertones that would lay the foundations for his mid-career practice.

In the early-1960s Bonifacio was granted a scholarship by the San Sebastian City Council and the Provincial Government of Biscay. At the end of the decade, Fernando Zóbel (1924-1984), who had purchased two of his paintings for the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca in 1967, encouraged him to move to that city, where he stayed for over twenty years. There he took part in the creation of the stained-glass windows of the cathedral and became acquainted with many artists of the time, including José Guerrero (1914-1991), Manuel Millares (1926-1972) and Antonio Saura (1930-1998). In that context he learned graphic art techniques thanks to Antonio Lorenzo (1922-2009) and eventually established himself as a highly accomplished engraver. In 1970 Bonifacio started to work with Galería Juana Mordó with whom he had his first solo show that same year in Madrid, where he would later settle, from 1991 until shortly before his demise.

Throughout his life he took part in many exhibitions, in the Juana Mordó and Antonio Machón galleries and in major institutions, like the Museo de Bellas Artes of Bilbao and the Museo San Telmo of San Sebastian. In 2003, the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid organised a retrospective of his life’s work. Bonifacio won a number of distinctions including Spain’s National Engraving Award (1993) and the Comunidad de Madrid Art Prize (2005). Bonifacio died on 16 December 2011 in San Sebastian.