This stunning work was acquired in Cuba in 1947. It was a gift from Rodolfo Ruibal, and family, to the present owner. Ruibal was a Professor of Biology Emeritus, as UC Riverside, and also a Cuban immigrant. The present owner, was the late Dr. Aurelio de la Vega. He was a one of the most significant contemporary classical music conductors and composers in the recent past, and a professor of music, at Cal State Northridge. I had the great fortune of sharing a friendship with him, over the past 25 years. We unconditionally guarantee the authenticity of this work. If shipped internationally, it will be removed from the framing, and shipped fully insured, via DHL.
Mario Carreño was a Cuban-born Chilean painter known for his unique style, which blends Cubist abstraction and surrealism with techniques seen in Mexican muralist paintings. Carreño was part of the second generation of Modern artists working in Cuba during the 20th century.
Mario Carreño y Morales was born in Havana, Cuba in May 1913. He studied painting at the Academia de San Alejandro in Havana, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, Spain; later, he attended the Ecole des Arts appliqués as well as the Académie Julian in Paris, France. Later, Carreño established residency in Santiago, Chile.
Carreño had his first one-man show in Havana in 1930. Two years later he traveled to Spain; on his return to Cuba he exhibited again in 1935. During 1936 he traveled to Mexico (where he also had an exhibition); here his works assumed the forms which are characteristic of the Mexican muralists’ movement, as well as the nuances which are typical of that school, such as the accurate definition of volumes.
He also traveled to Italy and the United States, where he taught at the New School of Social Research. He participated in important exhibits on Cuban art abroad, such as the show presented in 1944 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which was organized by the museum’s founder Alfred H. Barr Jr. with the assistance of Jose Gomez Sicre and Maria Luisa Gomez Mena, who was Carreño ‘s wife. in 1951, he was selected for the São Paulo Biennial; and in 1952, he exhibited at the XXVI Venice Biennial. In 1956, Carreño received the Guggenheim International Award, followed by the National Prize of Art of Chile in 1982, the Pablo Neruda Award (Chile) in 1984 and the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in 1987.
In 1957 he exhibited for the last time in Havana, travelling thereafter to several countries and settling in Santiago de Chile. In celebration of Carreño’s eightieth birthday a large retrospective show of the artist’s work was organized in Chile. An exhibition of the works completed in Cuba was shown at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana in that same year; after a long absence the master returned to Cuba to attend the opening.
It is possible to follow the development of this artist’s style as he came in contact with different countries and cultures, and with other artists. Thus, in Paris he met Jacques Bohon and Jaime Colson, the latter being one of the most important among painters from the Dominican Republic, with whom Carreño would continue working in Mexico as well as in Havana. From Col son he received a strong influence of the “metaphysical” style, as we define the style that had in Giorgio de Chirico its most brilliant exponent. During theearly Fifties, he abandoned figuration and started dealing with geometric and abstract forms. Returning to figurative art, his later work shows the influence of the abstract period, as he dismisses details to concentrate on the overall design of hieratic figures.
However, throughout the development of his oeuvre, in periods that covered a wide range of styles, Carreño remained faithful to his attempt to define his own personal identity.
Carreño died in Chile in December of 1999. Today, his work is owned by prominent institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile.
