Bonifacio

Bonifacio Alfonso is one of the most multifaceted and least known creators of his generation: a prolific painter, a peerless sketch artist and an engraver of boundless quality.

Having begun to draw in childhood, Bonifacio began his artistic career in 1955, the year in which he won first prize in a painting contest in San Sebastián, his hometown. He decided on painting after dedicating himself to various trades in his youth: he was a bellhop, apprentice blacksmith and cabinetmaker, errand boy, fisherman, a kitchen hand, a house painter and a jazz musician. He even fought twenty bullfights with picadors as an apprentice in the ring. Dolores Fernández Nieto, his mother, used to say: "Oh, my son, my son, you are a Jack of all trades and a master of none!"

In 1958, he held his first individual exhibition, at the Ateneo de Guipúzcoa in San Sebastián. Starting in 1966, he exhibited at the Sala Grises in Bilbao.

Then, in 1968, encouraged by Fernando Zobel, he decided to move to Cuenca, where he established a close relationship with artists of the time, such as José Guerrero and Antonio Saura, which would be essential for his artistic evolution. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, working hand in hand with the Juana Mordó Gallery, Bonifacio achieved a language so personal that it made him one of the most authentic painters of his generation. 

With more than thirty original editions, the quality and originality of his engraving work was recognized in 1993 when he was awarded Spain’s National Engraving Prize. In 2005, he received the National Prize for the Arts from the Community of Madrid.