He was born in 1903 in Turégano (Segovia). In 1919, he entered the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando with the intention of training as a sculptor, but soon decided to dedicate himself to painting. His time in Madrid was marked by his contact and friendship with writers and artists such as Federico García Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rafael Alberti, Luis Buñuel, Juan Bonafé, Francisco Bores, and the Polish Wladislaw Jahl. His aesthetic ideas place him in the group known as the “poet-painters,” as his work served as a visual counterpart to the poetry of those who would later form the Generation of ’27. It was precisely in two literary magazines, Verso y Prosa and Mediodía, where he published his first drawings.

In 1929, he moved to Paris, where he met, among others, Picasso, Dufy, Max Ernst, and Michael Sonnabend, who would become his dealer in New York. Between 1930 and 1934, he held several exhibitions in Madrid and Barcelona and spent short periods in London and Paris. At this time, his painting was characterized by a light, dreamy tone, with pale and melancholic colors. However, it already hinted at the structural rigor and deliberate lack of emphasis that would define his entire production. In 1936, he traveled to New York, and after a brief period of activity in service to the Republic, he fully entered the artistic world of the metropolis. In 1940, he became a naturalized American citizen and entered a period of creative crisis that would lead him to engage with Abstract Expressionism.

In 1943, he returned to New York, where he developed a dialogue with American Abstract Expressionism, consolidating a personal and unmistakable style based on vibrant chromatic harmonies over vaguely geometric structures or those evocative of inner landscapes. During these years, he befriended the members of the New York School: Rothko, De Kooning, Pollock, Kline, and Newman, as well as critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas B. Hess. On January 10, 2001, just before turning 98, Esteban Vicente passed away at his home in Bridgehampton (Long Island).