Mario Carreño

MARIO CARREÑO (Havana, Cuba, 1913 - Santiago de Chile, 1999).
Untitled, 1956.
Oil on canvas adhered to cardboard.
Attached certificate issued by the Carreño Foundation. Signed by Ida González de Carreño.
Work reproduced in the catalog of the 1958 exhibition, at the inauguration of the José Martí National Library, Cuba. Photocopy attached.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 64.5 x 48.5 cm; 93 x 77 cm (frame).
This work, made in 1956, is inscribed in the moment of full constructive maturity of Mario Carreño, when his language is decidedly oriented towards a geometric abstraction of strong symbolic charge. The composition is articulated as a network of rectangular and square planes that are assembled as a dynamic mosaic, where color, intense turquoise, deep blacks, vibrant yellows and fiery reds, acts as a structural and rhythmic element. The work belongs to a key period in which Carreño distances himself from the more figurative Caribbean imagery to enter into an abstraction of mystical and structural resonances. The pictorial space becomes a symbolic field where tradition and avant-garde dialogue in balance. The surface reveals a painting of contained but firm matter, where each plane is carefully calibrated to support the whole.
By the mid-1950s, the artist had left behind his early experiences linked to muralism and post-Cubism, as well as his period of greater Caribbean figuration, to enter into a fully structured language based on geometric abstraction. This process was not abrupt, but the result of a sustained evolution after his stays in Europe, Mexico and the United States, where he assimilated the lessons of cubism, constructivism and certain currents of international abstract art.
In 1956 Carreño maintained an intense intellectual and pedagogical activity, alternating his artistic production with teaching and theoretical reflection on modern art in Latin America. That same year he traveled again to Chile to teach courses on the evolution of contemporary art, before settling permanently in Santiago in 1958. The work, therefore, immediately precedes his residence in Chile and can be read as part of a period of formal consolidation and conceptual synthesis.

Initially trained at the San Alejandro Academy in Havana, Carreño developed an international career that took him to Madrid, Paris, Mexico and New York, coming into contact with figures such as Pablo Neruda and the Mexican muralists. He finally settled in Chile, where he obtained his nationality and received the National Art Prize in 1982. His work, present in important collections in America and Europe, is characterized by a constant synthesis between Latin American identity and modern languages.