Mario Carreño (1913-1999)

Acquired from the artist
Eduardo and Dori González, New York
Thence by descent

Havana, The Lyceum, Mario Carreño, November 1943

José Gómez-Sicre, Carreño, Havana, 1943, illustrated
José Gómez-Sicre, Art of Cuba in Exile, Miami, 1987, p. 53, illustrated

This work has probably never been restored. It is reinforced by a wooden framework on the reverse around the edges and across the center. The reverse and the sides are painted black, probably by the artist. The work itself is painted with Duco, a commercially available paint, which allowed the artist to create the fantastical patterns within the paint layer. Although the paint layer has cracked throughout the work, there is no actual instability to the paint layer. The cracking is visible, but it is not disturbing. There may have been a couple of paint losses during the artist’s lifetime, or perhaps even during the process of painting, which the artist retouched, for example the red spot of paint above and to the right of the head. There are some areas where the paint is not as thick as others, but there is still original paint in these areas, so they are not exactly paint losses. There are two small chips of paint loss about 4 inches to the right of the sitter’s chin. There is a very thin vertical line in the upper left that may actually be a thin scratch to the paint layer. (This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.)
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Sotheby’s is honored to be offering one of the key paintings from the Cuban Vanguardia movement: Portrait of María Luisa Gómez-Mena, by Mario Carreño.  This work, depicting a Cuban cultural icon, was shown at The Lyceum in Havana in 1943 and has not been exhibited in public since it entered the New York Collection of Eduardo and Dori González shortly thereafter.

Eduardo González was a successful Cuban businessman who travelled between New York and Havana. He, and his beautiful wife Dori, were friends and supporters of many of their Cuban artistic contemporaries. The couple and Mario Carreño soon developed a very close friendship. The González Collection grew to include several of Carreño’s paintings, including The Guitar Player, a vibrant painting in duco on panel sold at Sotheby's on May 27, 2003, for $465,000. Their friendship was such, that when Eduardo launched a new nightclub venture in Madrid in the early 1930s, he entrusted his friend Carreño to paint the murals. The Spanish Civil War soon put an end to this adventure, and Eduardo returned to America while Carreño went on to Mexico via Paris. In Mexico, he forged a close working relationship with the muralists, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros had been teaching in New York at the Experimental Workshop in the 1930s, where Jackson Pollock was one of the students.  At the workshop, Siqueiros advocated the use of new materials, encouraging experimentation with commercial paints and techniques instead of conventional art materials. One of these materials was duco, a fast drying enamel paint invented by DuPont for use in the automotive industry. Building on his experiences in Mexico, Carreño was able to secure two commissions for Siqueiros in Havana, where he assisted on the projects.

Carreño chose to use duco on wood as the medium in the depiction of his first wife, María Luisa Gómez-Mena. In this energetic portrait, Gómez-Mena emerges like a figurehead from a boat’s prow through waves of swirling pools of color. Around her figure, the pigments blend and bleed together in an almost random fashion, creating an effect of vibrating color which is not unlike those in Damien Hirst's spin paintings executed more than fifty years later. In exploiting this new medium, Carreño achieves a coloristic lyricism not seen before in modern painting.

The subject, María Luisa Gómez-Mena, was a woman of vision and character. She is sometimes referred to as “Cuba's Peggy Guggenheim.” Like Guggenheim, María Luisa came from a wealthy family and became a patron of many painters and writers, founding a publishing house where avant-garde poetry and politics were covered. Gómez-Mena changed the artistic panorama in Cuba, opening the first modern art gallery in Havana, Galería del Prado. At the gallery, she showed the best of the Cuban Vanguardia artists, amongst them Carlos Enríquez (who was married to American painter Alice Neel), Amelia Peláez, Fidelio Ponce de León, Mariano Rodríguez, Mario Carreño and Cundo Bermúdez. Gómez-Mena was also the patron of the groundbreaking 1944 Modern Cuban Painters exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.