Miguel Ángel Elices at Galería Orfila, Madrid: “Colorcentrismo III” and the Case for Colour as Subject

Every painter uses colour. Very few would say that colour is what their paintings are about. Miguel Ángel Elices says exactly that, and he has invented a word for it. Miguel Ángel Elices’ “Colorcentrismo III” at Galería Orfila in Madrid, on view from 28 October to 21 November 2026, is the third instalment of a project built around that word — and a compact, persuasive case for looking at abstraction one relationship at a time.

What “colorcentrismo” means

“Colour-centrism”, in Elices’ definition, describes painting in which colour stops being a means to an end — a way to describe an object, model a form or set a mood — and becomes the true protagonist of the picture. Shapes exist to carry colour; composition exists to stage encounters between hues. Elices calls colour the soul of painting, and the phrase is less romantic than programmatic: if colour is the soul, everything else is body.

He is careful not to claim he discovered anything. On the contrary, he places colour-centrism in a long line that runs from Impressionism and Fauvism through Cubism, Orphism and Surrealism to Pop Art, arguing that many painters practised it without ever giving it a name. One thinks of Robert and Sonia Delaunay’s simultaneous contrasts, or of the Fauves’ refusal to let local colour dictate their palettes. Elices’ contribution is to make the implicit explicit and build a working method around it.

A method of one colour after another

The method is intuitive and sequential. Elices does not begin with a finished design. He puts down a colour, and that colour suggests the next. Tones are mixed, graded and set against one another as the canvas develops, so that the final harmony is something he could not have planned at the outset. It is a little like improvisation in music: rules emerge from the playing rather than preceding it.

That explains why the geometry in these paintings never feels rigid. The vocabulary is hard-edged — bands, blocks, interlocking planes — but the decisions behind it are responsive. Look closely at the cover painting, an untitled oil of 92 by 73 centimetres, and you can almost reconstruct the sequence: a dominant field, a counter-tone pushed against it, a small accent that resolves the tension.

Miguel Ángel Elices and the eight paintings in Colorcentrismo III

The exhibition brings together eight oils on canvas, all titled S.T. (sin título, untitled). Refusing titles is consistent with the theory: a title would point the viewer toward a subject, and the subject here is the colour itself. The works come in two formats — medium canvases of about 92 by 73 centimetres and small 40-by-40 squares. The squares are worth particular attention. At that scale a painting is close to a colour proposition: two or three relationships, stated without decoration.

Elices was born in Valladolid in 1950 and is self-taught. His solo exhibitions include shows at Librería Oletvm in Valladolid (2003, 2011), Galería ARS (2004) and Galería MAES (2011) in Madrid, and Espacio Contemporánea in Madrid (2025, 2026). He took part in the DEARTE fair with Galería MAES at the Palacio de Congresos de Madrid in 2011 and in “Geometrías Abstractas” at Galería Orfila in 2016 — so this solo is also a return to a gallery that has followed his geometric work for a decade.

Galería Orfila and the Madrid context

Galería Orfila, on Calle Orfila in the Chamberí–Almagro area close to the Paseo de la Castellana, belongs to a strand of Madrid’s gallery scene that keeps faith with painting and with Spain’s strong tradition of geometric and constructive abstraction. Its group show “Geometrías Abstractas” is part of that commitment. While the city’s larger galleries cluster around Doctor Fourquet and Alameda, Orfila’s programme offers a quieter, more patient experience: a season of monthly solo shows by painters at all stages of their careers.

Why it matters

For collectors interested in geometric abstraction, the small 40-by-40 canvases are an accessible way into a coherent, theorised body of work. For painters, “Colorcentrismo III” is a practical lesson: the exhibition demonstrates how a strict formal vocabulary can be animated by an open, responsive process. And for anyone who has stood in front of a Rothko or an Albers and wondered why two colours side by side can feel like an event, Elices offers a plainspoken answer — because, for him, that is the whole point.

Visiting information

Galería Orfila, Calle Orfila 3, 28010 Madrid. 28 October – 21 November 2026. Hours: Tuesday–Friday 11am–2pm and 5:30–8:30pm, Monday afternoons, Saturday 11am–2pm. Contact: +34 91 319 88 64, [email protected]. See our Miguel Ángel Elices exhibition listing, the official exhibition page and more openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.