Esteban Vicente

Painter Esteban Vicente was the last of the European artists who came to the United States during the early days of the New York School and the last of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. Born in Turégano, Spain, Vicente studied art in Madrid with Salvador Dalí, lived in Paris, where he knew Pablo Picasso, and had a successful painting career in Barcelona, where he befriended Joan Miró, all before immigrating to New York with his American wife, Estelle Charney, in 1936.

A Spanish loyalist, he served as the vice consul for the loyalist government in Philadelphia during Spain's civil war. Vicente arrived at abstraction after a prolonged process of trial and error in the late 1940s but always retained within his art a lyricism reflective of the Paris School and an extraordinary control of composition and harmony of color.