Lot Essay
This lot is sold with two photo-certificates of authenticity from the artist dated Sgo.Chile 94 and 6 Marzo 1995.
Carreño painted this version of Cortadores de Cañas (Sugar-Cane
Cutters) in Havana in 1943. It is an oil study for the duco painting bearing the same title, sold at Christie's in May 1990 for $286,000. Apart from a well-known ink drawing of this subject, this oil study is the only other preparatory work for the famous painting known to date.
"In 1943, the Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros spent several months in Cuba. Carreño and his wife befriended him and commissioned him to make a duco mural for their apartment. Carreño had worked with duco during his stay in Mexico in 1936, and this renewed exposure to the medium led to a series of wooden panels. The drawing for one of these panels, Sugar-Cane Cutter of 1943 (cat 82) reflects the artist's continued interest in Cuba's main resource. Muscular and oversized to the point of appearing deformed, the figures in Sugar-Cane Cutters recall Siqueiros both in their style and in their aggressive, nationalistic forcefulness."
Giuglio V. Blanc
Cuban Modernism: The Search for a National Ehtos
Wifredo Lam and His Contemporaries 1938-1952, The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1992, exhibtion catalogue, p. 63.
Carreño painted this version of Cortadores de Cañas (Sugar-Cane
Cutters) in Havana in 1943. It is an oil study for the duco painting bearing the same title, sold at Christie's in May 1990 for $286,000. Apart from a well-known ink drawing of this subject, this oil study is the only other preparatory work for the famous painting known to date.
"In 1943, the Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros spent several months in Cuba. Carreño and his wife befriended him and commissioned him to make a duco mural for their apartment. Carreño had worked with duco during his stay in Mexico in 1936, and this renewed exposure to the medium led to a series of wooden panels. The drawing for one of these panels, Sugar-Cane Cutter of 1943 (cat 82) reflects the artist's continued interest in Cuba's main resource. Muscular and oversized to the point of appearing deformed, the figures in Sugar-Cane Cutters recall Siqueiros both in their style and in their aggressive, nationalistic forcefulness."
Giuglio V. Blanc
Cuban Modernism: The Search for a National Ehtos
Wifredo Lam and His Contemporaries 1938-1952, The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1992, exhibtion catalogue, p. 63.