Medal - 2010 TFP Award; Alfredo Alcaín

Alfredo Alcaín was born in the turbulent Madrid of 1936. He began his artistic training at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, from 1953 to 1958, continuing at the National School of 3400 and Decoration, where he learned engraving and lithography. He completed his studies at the National School of Cinematography in Madrid in the early 1960s.

He began his long artistic career in the 1960s, where he was one of the leading exponents of the Spanish Pop Art movement, which reacted against the "informalism" of the El Paso Group, transforming the original American model by seeking to infuse his creations with a markedly traditional and popular character. However, Alfredo Alcaín's work later evolved toward Cubist abstraction. His painting has oscillated between Pop and Critical Realism, and his continued creative work has taken him from painting to sculpture, collages, and even embroidery, compositions with opposing objects, and, most especially, graphic art.

In Alcaín's work of recent decades, we see a cooling of the tone in his painting, and he begins to incorporate wooden reliefs and objects that emerge from the pictorial support, becoming individualized as three-dimensional objects. A renowned engraver, his prints often consist of several images or blocks of color, assembled to create a single image. The effect is a work of art that is not only easy to see and understand, but also distinctive in its unique working style.

The Spanish Ministry of Culture awarded him the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 2003. Alfredo Alcaín is present in national and international collections and museums, such as the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Seville, the Engraving Museum of Buenos Aires, the Salvador Allende International Museum in Santiago, Chile, the Municipal Museum of Madrid, the National Library of Spain in Madrid, the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao, and the Reina Sofía National Art Center in Madrid. In 2010, the Royal Mint Foundation awarded him the Tomás Francisco Prieto Prize.