As part of the celebration of its 100th anniversary, the National Fine Arts Museum pays tribute to Mario Carreño (Havana, 1913 – Santiago de Chile, 1999), another centenarian who – by luck or chance – was born in the same year the institution in which opened. The exhibition Donde empieza la luz, organized by Roberto Cobas opened on October 4 at the Cuban Art Building and is preceded by another which in 1993 was organized to mark the 80th anniversary of the painter, who was living in Chile since 1957.
Belonging to the so-called Second Vanguard Generation that started in the 40s, Carreño , along with Amelia Pelaez , Cundo Bermúdez , Mariano Rodríguez , René Portocarrero and Wifredo Lam, he got inserted with his works in what could be defined as the project of Latin American modernity : the search for identity among the technical and stylistic developments in Europe and the finding of the customs, local themes and characters .
The work of each of the creators mentioned could exemplify this emancipation project that not only toured the manifestations of culture, but is rooted in the deepest sensitivity of time – assuming that there is something so like a narration. The Carreño exhibition in the in Fine Arts Museum is no exception , the exhibits are a small projection of what the viewer can read in the room devoted to the Second Vanguard, and may even extend into the 50s, basically the room abstract describing the decade. The curator, to follow a chronological order basis, shows the development of the career of Carreño as he was influenced by the styles of international masters of the moment: the Mexican muralists and Picasso’s neoclassicism at the same time; Cubism – also clearly debtor of the Spanish artist, some colorful expressionism near Mariano’s early works, from surrealistic with the influence of Miro and finally abstraction. A geometric abstraction that was never cold or rational, but intentionally warm, even when the color range would include cold tones, as is the 1956 piece of the same title of the exhibition.
When we appreciate the work as a whole, and compared him with other members of his class, we find that Carreño does not have a “seal of artist” as understood in the case of Amelia, Lam, Portocarero, creators within the range of their production are identified with a visual we assume to be the realization of his style. On the contrary, we seem to be seeing the result of who has the character of the experimenter that is never satisfied with fixed colors a stable visuality, a corpus itself. However, different stages of his career are unified into clear compositions, structural precision in drawing (inherited from his work as an illustrator for periodicals) and, especially, in an instinct that balances the colors even when you cannot talk about predominant in his work ranges because he moved through the stridency to lighter colors with complete ease.
Perhaps his most well-known period is when he discovered the Mexican muralists along with the taste for stout bodies, genders and classical compositions. In this sense, the Birth of the American nations (1940) is one of his most representative paintings. The exhibition will also show marine medium format that are of interest to the extent that it is a genre not too worked in Cuba despite being an archipelago. It also highlights Retrato de Graciela de Armas (circa 1957), a unique piece in the exhibition not only for the subject, but also by the symbiosis that he manages with components of Cubism and Art Deco.
For: Danay Medina Medina
