I met Alfonso in a New York that no longer exists. The year was 1977, the city was broke, crime was rampant and the Bronx was on fire. But if you were young, and eager to expose the juggler of your aesthetics to all that was new in the arts; all that was radical, transgressive, sexy and occasionally downright dangerous – there was nowhere else on the planet you wanted to be.

At least that’s how Alfonso and I felt. We were introduced by our mutual friend Alan Kleinberg, a photographer whose photos captured the beauty and decadence of both the downtown and uptown demimonde in the late 70s and early 80s. If memory serves me right. The three of us were at a gala art gallery opening.
I can’t recall the painter or the paintings that were being exhibited, but the gallery was packed. In addition to art world luminaries, Andy Warhol, NYC Culture Czar Henry Geldzahler, David Hockney and an about to be famous Robert Mapplethorpe, there were the usual suspects – culture vultures, fashion models, cultured junkies, and collectors with more money than taste. 

What stood out in my mind about Alfonso that night, was that he wasn’t there for the scene, he was there for the art.

Unlike Alfonso, I grew up around the art world. My eldest sister and her husband owned the Robert Miller Gallery, and by ‘77 I had a decidedly cynical view of the pernicious role money and art world politics played in critical acclaim.

But Alfonso’s enthusiasm for and curiosity about art and artists was contagious. As we got to be friends, he made me look at art I took for granted, or worse, had dismissed, with fresh eyes.

From the way Alfonso talked, I assumed he was a painter and I remember being startled when I discovered every morning he put on a jacket and tie and worked at a “Shipping Agency,” whatever that was. From the start, there was something private and vaguely secretive about Alfonso’s connoisseurship.

When he finally shyly confessed that he liked to paint and showed me his paintings, I immediately told him to quit his day job and paint full time.

It took Alfonso over forty years to follow my advice but the paintings and drawings in his current show at the MUSEO DEI BOZZETTI, aptly titled American Lessons, proves Alfonso should have listened to me back in ‘77.

Though Alfonso is now, how shall I put it politely… in advanced middle age, his art has a youthful energy. For me, his colorful mix of the abstract and imagery that is foreign yet strangely familiar, give the viewer the feeling they have been invited into a dream.

In short, the NYC of our youth no longer exists, but my friend Alfonso’s talent and passion have not only endured, they have prevailed.

Dirk Wittenborn

Brooklyn, January 2023