By Annette Hinkle
Esteban Vicente was a fixture in Bridgehampton and for years, could be seen taking his daily walk to and from his home on Montauk Highway, just east of the Bridgehampton School. His regular stops included the post office and the Candy Kitchen where he’d pick up a copy of the New York Times.
The walks must have served him well, for Vicente lived to be 97 (he died in 2001). But many people who regularly saw the older gentleman walking along the side of the road may not have realized that he was a renowned artist — not just here, but also in his native Spain, where most of his works now reside in a museum dedicated to him in Segovia.
Those who’d like to see the artist’s work closer to home can visit the Parrish Art Museum which is currently offering “Esteban Vicente: Portrait of the Artist” featuring his paintings and works on paper, including collages, from the 1940s to the 1990s. Curated by Alicia Longwell, Ph.D., also on view are color photographs of the artist and his wife, Harriet, taken by Laurie Lambrecht in his Bridgehampton studio and garden in the early 1990s, and works on paper by many of Vicente’s friends, colleagues and students, including Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Chuck Close and Mercedes Matter, among others.
“He’s an important artist. He and Harriet came to Bridgehampton in 1964 and were very well known members of the artist community,” explains Longwell. “The composite idea of this show is to offer a portrait of the artist through Vicente’s own work — collages and paintings — then to have selections of works on paper by artists he knew and worked with, along with the photographs by Laurie Lambrecht.”
“I hope this context brings a little fuller picture of the artist.”
Vicente was one of the last surviving members of the first generation of the New York School painters, and he bore witness to the most important artistic movements of the 20th century on both sides of the Atlantic. Schooled in the Old World Beaux Arts tradition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid (when Salvador Dali was also a student there), like many young artists of his day, Vicente gravitated to Paris where the cubists and surrealists were at the cutting edge of the art world.
“Picasso was there,” explains Longwell. “He had an afternoon with Picasso, as most young artists did. After the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War, he came to New York and was very much a part of the New York art scene.”
Vicente arrived in this country in 1936 around the same time as other European artists such as Piet Mondrian, Max and Jimmy Ernst, André Breton. He soon became involved in this new artistic community and was a vital member of the 8th Street Club, which began gathering in the 1950s and whose members were instrumental in the rise of abstract expressionism.
“Before social networking, there were these myriad ways that artists circulated and met,” explains Longwell. “Vicente said they drank coffee in the early days, then someone started going out for a beer. Then they started meeting at the Cedar Street Tavern and Max’s Kansas City.”
The group also hosted exhibits and the work of many of Vicente’s contemporaries from the 8th Street Club are included in this show, as are those of his students, whom he taught as a visiting professor at Yale, Berkeley and Princeton or at the New York Studio School, which he and Mercedes Matter founded in the early 1960s.
“He was very well known as a teacher,” explains Longwell. “Esteban never set out to change students to paint his way, but gave them permission to find themselves and their own way. He was supportive, but affirming.”
“He said if you are a doctor, you retire. If you are a plumber you retire. But as an artist you never retire,” she adds. “He also said, ‘You’re a human being first and then an artist.’”
Vicente’s work in this show spans half a century, and while one might expect that his style would have changed over the years, Longwell notes that isn’t the case.
“The earliest work in the show is from 1949. You don’t see radical changes in his style, but for me, I can see how Esteban’s work became more seamless,” says Longwell. “There might be a darker outline or more pronounced brushwork in earlier work, then three late paintings, which are part of a fabulous suite on the back wall of the gallery, are beautifully distilled. You don’t see the brushwork, it’s evening out and all on one plain.”
While selections of Vicente’s work have been included in many shows at The Parrish over the years, this is the first time a full exhibit has been organized to highlight the artist’s work.
“It’s a real thrill for me to bring out the collection, which we always want to remind people of, and reinforce why we’re building a new museum,” says Longwell. “We have all these great holdings, and Vicente’s works on papers, in a way, are almost more immediate than the paintings. They’re small and you can get closer to them.”
“I think it makes an immediate connection. I’m thrilled to have these works out,” she adds. “What’s remarkable is I think people, in a way, still struggle with abstraction, but here you’re seeing these gorgeous colors, tones and shapes that are universal. I find these paintings have enormous resonances and beauty.”
Rounding out the portrait of the artist are Laurie Lambrecht’s photographs of Vicente in his later years in the Bridgehampton studio and garden.
“She had done a very interesting series on Roy Lichtenstein’s studio,” explains Longwell. “This is an extraordinary tradition. Cartier-Bresson’s Picasso photos, Hans Namuth filming Pollock, she carries on that tradition. I had seen the occasional image [of Vicente] and they were fabulous. So last summer I said, ‘Laurie, are there any more?’”
In fact, there were a lot more.
“I felt like we unearthed this incredible archive,” says Longwell. “You see him reading the newspaper he’d come back with from the Candy Kitchen, and the things he had tacked up on the wall. They [Vicente and his wife] used this as a country home, what really comes through is the love for his garden and the attraction to the proximity to nature. That’s what was important for him out here.”
“Esteban Vicente: Portrait of the Artist” runs through April 10, 2011 at the Parrish Art Museum, 25 Job’s Lane, Southampton. For more information, call 283-2118.
Photos: Esteban Vicente in his Studio, July, 1992, by Laurie Lambrecht. Archival pigment print, Edition 1 of 12, 24” x 24.”
Esteban Vicente, Untitled # 18, 1958. Charcoal on paper, 39 3/8 x 50 1/4 inches.
