The title of the exhibition Esteban Vicente. Painting Must Be Poor alludes to a text written by the artist, originally in English "Painting should be poor" that speaks to us about the creative process of a work of art and the meaning of his painting. The exhibition comprises a selection of 27 works from the Permanent Collection of the Esteban Vicente Contemporary Art Museum that allows for a journey through the artist's evolution across his different creative stages.

Esteban Vicente trained in Spain, close to the postulates of the Paris School and the painter-poets of the Generation of '27. In 1936 he moved to the USA and settled in New York, joining the abstract expressionism movement. From the tangled and cluttered compositions of the early 1950s, his painting evolves, in the 1960s, toward greater prominence of forms that simultaneously order the composition. In the 1970s color completely conquers the work and he exchanges the brush for the use of the airbrush, which allows him to capture light thanks to color saturation. Esteban Vicente shows an interior landscape reduced to color, glazes and nuances, in a constant search for color and light. In the 1980s and 1990s, Esteban Vicente's painting achieves freedom; diverse organic forms reclaim nature as the main theme in large format, colors multiply, light emanates from the works, color is light.

A search for light that becomes essential also in the creation of Eusebio Sempere in this case through geometric abstraction and that is perceived in the very architectural space of the MACA. This exhibition is the result of collaboration between the Esteban Vicente Contemporary Art Museum and the Contemporary Art Museum of Alicante, kindred institutions in that they contemplate among their functions, that of promoting the programming of temporary exhibitions that complement the vision and study of contemporary art.