Lot Essay
There is a statement of authenticity on the reverse signed by the artist and dated '95'. This painting is also sold with a photo-certificate of authenticity from the artist dated '95". .
Easel painting has been practiced by Cubans since the eighteenth century. However, Cuban painting only came into its own in the 1930s and reached its peak in the 1940s. During that decade two closely related generations of painters developed a cohesive modernist movement, often referred to as the School of Havana.(1) Like their contemporaries in the rest of Latin America, early modern Cuban painters aimed for an art that would integrate the regional and the universal, the national and the international. Generally, progressive Latin American artists of the first half of the century appropriated modern and pre-modern European styles for the construction and affirmation of personal, national and regional identities. Mexican historian Jorge Alberto Manrique summarized the crux of early modernism in Latin America. Thus, "the [Latin American] artistic movement [of the 1920s through the 1940s] has to different degrees a common denominator, which consists of an awakening to modernity, an opening of the revolutionary changes going on in Europe at the moment...and at the same time also an opening of the artistic eye to the consciousness of their own social realities, in search of something capable of defining and identifying themselves as different from Europe."(2)
In the case of Cuba and particularly Havana, a welcoming attitude to the outside world, as befits the citizens of one of the oldest and busiest ports of the Americas, combined with a strong search for national cohesion, a typical preoccupation of intellectuals and artists from any young republic, guided the Cuban modernists' interest in developing an art in tune with international artistic trends as well as with Cuban internal issues. These artists adopted European and Mexican artistic forms and ideas to visualize 'lo cubano'. Using a mixture of observation and imagination they created a multiplicity of national symbols or identities based on representations of the Cuban landscape, the Cuban peasant, Afrocubans, Cuban architectural decoration and other related themes in order to define a sense of place, people and traditions. The achievement of the Cuban modernists also included the replacement of a worn-out academic tradition in painting, and in the process advanced this art to the forefront of elite cultural practices, which were previously dominated by literature and music. Finally, the pioneers of modern Cuban painting placed for the first time Cuban art on the international cultural map. The latter was accomplished through a series of individual and group exhibitions in Latin America and the United States, including the famous 1944 Modern Cuban Painters show held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Two of the leading Cuban modernists of the 1940s were Mario Carreño (b.1913) and Mariano Rodriguez (1912-1990). Although their experiences and artistic styles differ in many ways, they shared during that decade an interest in Picasso's classical work, the Mexican Muralist movement, and with the help of these artistsic sources, the symbolization of 'lo cubano'. These two painters also shared an attraction for the representation of the Cuban woman in order to signify the nation.
Carreño, one of the most prolific and technically deft of the Cuban modernists, entered San Alejandro's Academy of Art in Havana in 1925. There, he had his first individual show in 1930 and spent the next decade travelling, studying and creating illustrations and paintings in Mexico City, Paris and New York. In 1941 he returned to Cuba, where the classical style he developed during the previous decade gave way to expressionism, and later on abstraction as a more suitable way to represent the rediscovery of the island. He painted Cuban peasants, Afro-Cubans, the surrounding vegetation and Creole female nudes in a tropical Arcadia. In the context of Cuban nationalism of the 1940s, Carreño's paintings of nudes in landscape settings represent the nation as feminine, sensual and abundant. In Cuban literature, the nation-as-lover theme dates back to the writings of José María Heredia (1803-1839) and José Martí (1853-1895), whereas in Cuban painting this concept was introduced by the 'vanguardia' painters Antonio Gattorno (1904-1980) and Carlos Enriquez (1900-1957) in the 1930s. Carreño's 1940s robust nudes set in sun-drenched landscapes represent a high point in the Cuban male view of the homeland as a nurturing lover.
Mariano (who went by his first name) was also partial to the representation of the Cuban woman who, along with peasant figures, tropical fruits and roosters, forms an essential part of his iconography from the 1940s on.(4) After a brief artistic education of one year at the Academia de Arte San Alejandro (1936) and another year studying drawing and mural painting in Mexico with the muralist Manuel Rodriguez Lozano (1937), Mariano made his artistic entrance in Havana with the painting 'Unity' of 1938 (which won a purchase award at Cuba's Second National Salon of Painting and Sculpture), and with his first solo show at the Lyceum in 1939. In the following decade he emerged as one of the leading Cuban modernists working on easel and mural paintings, book illustrations and later on, ceramics.
Mariano's representation of the female figure in interior settings follows a long European tradition which associates women with domesticity. In Cuba, this pictorial tradition can be traced to the nineteenth-century academic paintings of José Arburu Morell (1864-1889) and Guillermo Colazo (1850-1896), as well as to the pioneer modernist paintings of Victor Manuel (1897-1969) and Amelia Pelaez (1896-1968). In contrast with his predecessors' representation of Cuban women as comely and sedate, Mariano's are monumental and assertive, breaking the norm of most domestic representation of women. On the other hand, he shares with Pelaez the association of Cuban women with native culture, as signified by the 'Cuban Baroque' style of the interiors, embodied and inhabited by these female figures.
The representation of women as a discourse on national identity is a recurrent theme in Modern Cuban painting and some of the oils and works on paper by Mario Carreño and Mariano Rodriguez are among the most valued aesthetic statements on this subject. From a wider perspective, their most significant contribution to Cuban modernism was the transformation of foreign artistic models into highly personal styles and relevant symbols of Cuban ethos.
Dr. Juan A. Martinez
Miami, March, 1995
1. J.A. Martinez, "José Mijares and the School of Havana," Celebrando a Mijares (Miami: Cuban Museum of Art and Culture, 1994).
2. Jorge A. Manrique, "Identidad o Modernismo?" América Latina en sus Artes, Damián Bayon ed. (Mexico: Siglo XXI editores, S.A., 1974), p.19.
3. Mario Carreño, Cronología del Recuerdo (Santiago de Chile: Ed. Antártica S.A., 1991).
4. Consejo Nacional de Cultura. "Mariano, Exposición Retrospectiva" Havana: Museo Nacional de Cuba, 1976).
Easel painting has been practiced by Cubans since the eighteenth century. However, Cuban painting only came into its own in the 1930s and reached its peak in the 1940s. During that decade two closely related generations of painters developed a cohesive modernist movement, often referred to as the School of Havana.(1) Like their contemporaries in the rest of Latin America, early modern Cuban painters aimed for an art that would integrate the regional and the universal, the national and the international. Generally, progressive Latin American artists of the first half of the century appropriated modern and pre-modern European styles for the construction and affirmation of personal, national and regional identities. Mexican historian Jorge Alberto Manrique summarized the crux of early modernism in Latin America. Thus, "the [Latin American] artistic movement [of the 1920s through the 1940s] has to different degrees a common denominator, which consists of an awakening to modernity, an opening of the revolutionary changes going on in Europe at the moment...and at the same time also an opening of the artistic eye to the consciousness of their own social realities, in search of something capable of defining and identifying themselves as different from Europe."(2)
In the case of Cuba and particularly Havana, a welcoming attitude to the outside world, as befits the citizens of one of the oldest and busiest ports of the Americas, combined with a strong search for national cohesion, a typical preoccupation of intellectuals and artists from any young republic, guided the Cuban modernists' interest in developing an art in tune with international artistic trends as well as with Cuban internal issues. These artists adopted European and Mexican artistic forms and ideas to visualize 'lo cubano'. Using a mixture of observation and imagination they created a multiplicity of national symbols or identities based on representations of the Cuban landscape, the Cuban peasant, Afrocubans, Cuban architectural decoration and other related themes in order to define a sense of place, people and traditions. The achievement of the Cuban modernists also included the replacement of a worn-out academic tradition in painting, and in the process advanced this art to the forefront of elite cultural practices, which were previously dominated by literature and music. Finally, the pioneers of modern Cuban painting placed for the first time Cuban art on the international cultural map. The latter was accomplished through a series of individual and group exhibitions in Latin America and the United States, including the famous 1944 Modern Cuban Painters show held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Two of the leading Cuban modernists of the 1940s were Mario Carreño (b.1913) and Mariano Rodriguez (1912-1990). Although their experiences and artistic styles differ in many ways, they shared during that decade an interest in Picasso's classical work, the Mexican Muralist movement, and with the help of these artistsic sources, the symbolization of 'lo cubano'. These two painters also shared an attraction for the representation of the Cuban woman in order to signify the nation.
Carreño, one of the most prolific and technically deft of the Cuban modernists, entered San Alejandro's Academy of Art in Havana in 1925. There, he had his first individual show in 1930 and spent the next decade travelling, studying and creating illustrations and paintings in Mexico City, Paris and New York. In 1941 he returned to Cuba, where the classical style he developed during the previous decade gave way to expressionism, and later on abstraction as a more suitable way to represent the rediscovery of the island. He painted Cuban peasants, Afro-Cubans, the surrounding vegetation and Creole female nudes in a tropical Arcadia. In the context of Cuban nationalism of the 1940s, Carreño's paintings of nudes in landscape settings represent the nation as feminine, sensual and abundant. In Cuban literature, the nation-as-lover theme dates back to the writings of José María Heredia (1803-1839) and José Martí (1853-1895), whereas in Cuban painting this concept was introduced by the 'vanguardia' painters Antonio Gattorno (1904-1980) and Carlos Enriquez (1900-1957) in the 1930s. Carreño's 1940s robust nudes set in sun-drenched landscapes represent a high point in the Cuban male view of the homeland as a nurturing lover.
Mariano (who went by his first name) was also partial to the representation of the Cuban woman who, along with peasant figures, tropical fruits and roosters, forms an essential part of his iconography from the 1940s on.(4) After a brief artistic education of one year at the Academia de Arte San Alejandro (1936) and another year studying drawing and mural painting in Mexico with the muralist Manuel Rodriguez Lozano (1937), Mariano made his artistic entrance in Havana with the painting 'Unity' of 1938 (which won a purchase award at Cuba's Second National Salon of Painting and Sculpture), and with his first solo show at the Lyceum in 1939. In the following decade he emerged as one of the leading Cuban modernists working on easel and mural paintings, book illustrations and later on, ceramics.
Mariano's representation of the female figure in interior settings follows a long European tradition which associates women with domesticity. In Cuba, this pictorial tradition can be traced to the nineteenth-century academic paintings of José Arburu Morell (1864-1889) and Guillermo Colazo (1850-1896), as well as to the pioneer modernist paintings of Victor Manuel (1897-1969) and Amelia Pelaez (1896-1968). In contrast with his predecessors' representation of Cuban women as comely and sedate, Mariano's are monumental and assertive, breaking the norm of most domestic representation of women. On the other hand, he shares with Pelaez the association of Cuban women with native culture, as signified by the 'Cuban Baroque' style of the interiors, embodied and inhabited by these female figures.
The representation of women as a discourse on national identity is a recurrent theme in Modern Cuban painting and some of the oils and works on paper by Mario Carreño and Mariano Rodriguez are among the most valued aesthetic statements on this subject. From a wider perspective, their most significant contribution to Cuban modernism was the transformation of foreign artistic models into highly personal styles and relevant symbols of Cuban ethos.
Dr. Juan A. Martinez
Miami, March, 1995
1. J.A. Martinez, "José Mijares and the School of Havana," Celebrando a Mijares (Miami: Cuban Museum of Art and Culture, 1994).
2. Jorge A. Manrique, "Identidad o Modernismo?" América Latina en sus Artes, Damián Bayon ed. (Mexico: Siglo XXI editores, S.A., 1974), p.19.
3. Mario Carreño, Cronología del Recuerdo (Santiago de Chile: Ed. Antártica S.A., 1991).
4. Consejo Nacional de Cultura. "Mariano, Exposición Retrospectiva" Havana: Museo Nacional de Cuba, 1976).