Mario Carreño
Havana 1913–Santiago de Chile 1999
Mario Carreño was one of the young talents to emerge in the world of Cuban visual arts in the 1930s.
In 1932 he traveled to Spain, impelled by a youthful drive to complete his cultural education. Initially, he was not interested in going to Paris, then the main mecca for the arts. Instead, he settled in Madrid and took drawing classes at the San Fernando Academy. At the same time, he became involved in the intense political movements of the time, creating revolutionary posters and drawings filled with social commentary. He was linked to several leftist groups, and for that reason was detained several times at the Cárcel Modelo de Madrid. Following his progressive ideals, he illustrated Octubre magazine, directed by the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti. In 1935 he returned to Cuba and exhibited his impressions of Spain at one of the most important venues in the country, the Lyceum in Havana.
It was in Mexico where his art reached its first and perhaps principal moment of definition. Carreño was only 23 when he arrived in Mexico in 1936, attracted by the powerful lure of Mexican mural painting. There, his love of Mexican art was taken in a new direction when he met the Dominican painter Jaime Colson—an encounter that would determine his artistic path for the next few years. Colson brought young Carreño up to speed on contemporary art trends, and was a decisive influence on his inclination toward classicism.
After his productive experiences in Mexico, Carreño traveled with Colson to Havana, where they stayed for two months. He then went on to Paris, where he expected to find a definitive direction for his art. There, he studied the works of David and Ingres at the Louvre, where he absorbed firsthand the great classicist tradition of Western art.
This classicist influence is evident in his paintings from the late 1930s, culminating in his masterpiece El nacimiento de las naciones americanas (The Birth of the American Nations, 1940). As Ramón Vázquez points out, “Gradually, the shapes gain in weightiness, mass, fleshiness, becoming archetypical countrywomen, bathers, maternal figures, in a new, decidedly American classicism.”
Upon returning to Cuba, Carreño created a cycle of paintings on themes ranging from pastorals, such as Escena campesina (Country Scene, National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana), to seascapes and works such as Naturaleza muerta (Still Life, National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana). Several of these works are infused with the metaphysical atmosphere that seems ubiquitous at a certain point in his oeuvre. Some traces of classicism remain, but Carreño’s intention at this point was to break free of this influence, which had characterized so much of his production. And he does it with a vengeance, commencing a period that could be described as baroque, dominated by earthy, telluric compositions, powerful and dramatic in their mise-en-scènes as well as in the materials used to paint them—for example, his famous spray-painted works of 1943, such as Cortadores de caña (Cane Cutters); Fuego en el batey (Fire at the Batey); and Danza afrocubana (Afro-Cuban Dance).
In the years that followed, this powerful impetus was channeled into a formal purification that led him to abstractionism, albeit without losing sight of his own geographic and cultural milieu. This period is represented by a group of emblematic pieces painted in 1947, including Trío (Trio, National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana); Pareja bailando y violinista (Two Dancers and a Violin Player); and Fruteros con guitarras (Fruit Bowls with Guitars).
All three paintings are dominated by a structural synthesis based on geometric shapes, discernible even in the human figures. Fruit Bowls with Guitars is a paradigm of this period. Carreño arrived at abstractionism well before his contemporaries, among whom it would not be a well-established trend until the early 1950s.
Fruit Bowls with Guitars is not only representative of a particular period in the artist’s career, but is notable for the successful integration of its compositional elements. It is a clear and fundamental antecedent to the vigorous abstractionist works that Carreño would go on to paint in the 1950s.
—Roberto Cobas Amate
