Mario Carreño

b. Havana, Cuba, 1913 – d. Santiago de Chile, Chile, 1999

La Finca (The Farm)

1945

Oil on canvas

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Mario Carreño is one of the most important Cuban and Latin American artists of the twentieth century. He emerged among the second generation of modern Cuban artists to become a leading figure in the 1940s. He was especially known for increasingly stylized paintings reflecting the tropical Cuban vernacular. Carreño lived between Cuba and New York before relocating to Chile in the 1950s.

 

A mid-century advocate for geometric abstraction, Carreño later combined constructivist forms with surreal and dreamlike landscapes.

 

In La Finca (The Farm), a guajira (peasant) offers a piña (pineapple), the symbol of hospitality and abundance on her finca (farm). The imagery of freely roaming creatures beneath the azure sky in a stylized Eden marks a transitional phase in Carreño’s style. While it resonates with his earlier pastoral motifs inspired by myths of the Cuban countryside, this work prefigures the geometric abstraction Carreño embraces in the following decade.

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*This piece was included in the exhibition section titled "The Sensory Landscape of Memory and Desire."