A number of similarities in the shapes and some common patterns in the oeuvres emerge from an attentive analysis of the archive material, revealing Alcorn’s ability to develop ideas and reuse some motives by adapting them to the needs of completely different works. Often this dynamic process is remarked in assignments of the same period, but sometimes traces of an original idea can be seen also in works separated by years.

This happened throughout Alcorn’s career and increased in the Eighties, when he started to archive his old material and rediscovered his own works. In those years he revisited a host of archetypal images from his youth, breathing new life into them and applying to them the changes that his new mastery suggested him.