no title no. 4

Painting from the heart

Despite surviving two heart attacks and two clots on the brain, Mallorca’s Juan Alcón continues to be an exceptional artist. His warmth and good humour is still perfectly in tact, and his passion and energy for his craft is as strong as ever.

Juan Alcón realised from the young age of 14 that he had been blessed with a great perceptive ability, and was able to express emotions through his art.
But now, at 72, despite the wisdom of his years, he does not know how to respond when I ask him if talent and artistic sensitivity is something we’re born with or if it is something which flourishes as time goes by. Whatever he decides, if you saw his first painting you’d know that it must have required an exceptional and precocious talent to paint like he did at 14.
Born in Valencia in 1937, his formal background in the study of Fine Arts was at the art school San Carlos in Valencia, but this has been less important to him than the influence of well-known artist Paco Lozano, who has been both teacher and a friend to Alcón, showing him how to view the world through art.
Another eminent figure that has inspired work is Alcón’s work is Genaro Lahuerta, who made him learn to “feel” art.
His talent strikes me the moment I enter his old Mallorca house on the outskirts of Palma CARLA IS THIS CORRECT. The walls are covered with paintings of great emotion and richness. They lighten the atmosphere and leave one astonished at the magnificent scenes and beautiful portrayal of women.
Juan Alcón paints women in an angelic way, delicate, elegant and soft-featured, with echoes of poetic musicality.
Alcon’s aim is to convey life: he admires beauty, not only in the landscape, but also in women.
The models in his portraits are beautiful, but not erotic, elegant and fragile. Their eyes are prominently light blue, even when the models have dark eyes, Alcón paints them clear, as it’s the way he sees them. “If you look into a woman’s eyes, you can see her whole life,” he tells me.
“For the artist the eyes are the most important part of the woman. A glance, for the painter, says more than a thousand words,” he says. Juan Alcón admits to being both romantic and passionate about women. He fell in love with one of his models the first time he painted her when he was in his forties and she was only 19, and for several years they had an intense love affair. She stood by him when he had his second clot in the brain ten years ago. At that time he couldn’t speak or move and for five years was unable to paint. But his love for painting beat his incapability. He even strapped his paintbrush around his immobile right hand so that he could continue to express his emotions through art.
“My art is authentic, I paint what I feel, I don’t care whether it’s something good or bad,” he says with a cheeky grin. This intuitive artist follows nothing but his own feelings - if he feels romantic he’ll paint
something tender, if he’s feeling angry, his paintings will be more dramatic. He tells me it is all about letting go of himself when he’s painting. “I trust in the subconscious more than in the consciousness.”
Curiously he appears in most of his portrait paintings and with careful observation you can spot his persona with the thick beard that has accompanied him for decades. The painter does this unconsciously and says he doesn’t know why he does it. “It just comes out that way.”
As an artist he has adopted something of a rebellious spirit and has never followed the tendencies of the time. When he was in Paris in the 60s, he painted abstract when everyone painted figurative. “I paint for nobody but myself,” he says with his permanent smile.
Alcón sees abstract art as the “liberation of the soul”. He strikes on the importance of colour and technique and believes that some people allow marketing to dictate what a painting is really worth. For Alcón, “those who use too much marketing are rubbish”. He says there are many good painters in Spain, but most of them are living anonymously and explains how he’s lost many marketing opportunities because of his anarchism and refusal to engage politically.
“I’m a painter, not a politician.”
His profound knowledge of classic art, elegance in form and content, along with his brilliant capacity to add beauty to the everyday, give Alcón an exceptional skill, which is still to be discovered by many of those who appreciate art.
Since his early years, Alcón has uncountable exhibitions and shows. He inaugurated the well-known “Galleria Picó” in central Jaime III in Palma, in which his art occupied three entire rooms in the gallery.
Most of his important works are in private collections or can be found in national and international museums and public collections. Some of these expositions took place in New York, Cannes, Frankfurt or Caracas. In the 70s the artist was asked by the Vatican in Rome to paint various “Frescos” of Saints. Amongst his awards is the First Prize in Vienna on the exhibition “Fantastic Realism” or the award of the “House of Art” in Munich.

During his period in Paris he was so acclaimed he made 50 paintings a year.
In Mallorca, you can find his work in the “Galleria del Mundo” in Portocolom
(http://www.lagaleriadelmundo.net)

Prices range from €1500 to €20,000

His advice to the novice painter?
“Work hard and learn from your teachers but paint what your heart tells you to.”

If you want to see some of his works, visit www.artquid.com/rosenthal

Awards & Prizes
for example :
1956 : Gold medal and 10 more national prizes of the University
1956 : Gold medal and honour on the 'IV. Salon in Benimar'
1957 : Silver medal on the 'EXMA'
1958 : 1. prize of the Art School "Bellas Arte" in Paular
1958 : Scholarship (two years!) of the city of Valencia
1959 : Awards of the 'Premio Ateneo' and 'Salons de Otoño'
1959 : Prize in Sevilla
1960 - 1963 Alcón lived in Paris
1960 : Scholarship of the french government in Paris(!)
1965 - 1970 Alcón lived in Germany
1966 : Art-Prize and honour of the city of Frankfurt
1968 : Award of the 'House of Art' in Munich
1972 : Prize on the "Exposición Nacional"
1972 : Gold medal 'International', Calvia
1972: Gold medal 'International', Pollensa
1973: Award and 'Citizen of Honour' of the city of Palma de Mallorca
1976: he represented Spain on the Expo
1978: 1st prize in Vienna on the exhibition "Fantastic Realism".

Expositions
Here are some of his most importants:
New York - Paris - Nantes - Cannes - London - Caracas - Rome - Vienna - Madrid - Barcelona - Sevilla - San Sebastian - Alicante - Valencia - Bilbao - Segovia - Murcia - Menorca - Mallorca - Antibes - Frankfurt - Munich - Mülheim - Stockholm - and many others more...