Andrew Huber
Head of Department
Lot 40
MARIANO RODRIGUEZ(1912-1990)Abstracción
1959
1959
19 May 2022, 17:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$48,255 inc. premium
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Randy Reynolds
Specialist, Head of Sale
MARIANO RODRIGUEZ (1912-1990)
Abstracción
1959
signed and dated 59
oil on canvas
59 1/2 by 50 1/4 in.
151.1 by 127.6 cm.
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Dolores and Alejandro Rodriguez, Havana, Cuba and will be included in volume III of the Catalogue Raisonné of Mariano Rodriguez.
1959
signed and dated 59
oil on canvas
59 1/2 by 50 1/4 in.
151.1 by 127.6 cm.
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Dolores and Alejandro Rodriguez, Havana, Cuba and will be included in volume III of the Catalogue Raisonné of Mariano Rodriguez.
Footnotes
Provenance
Private Collection (Thence by descent from the artist)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Between 1958 and 1959, the expressionist vocation that the Cuban painter Mariano Rodríguez had developed turned towards a much more radical abstraction. All traces of figurative allusion disappear, and the intention is, in some cases, declared in the work's title. It is the moment when artworks such as Pajaros, Galleros, and Jardín were produced, all resolved in energetic lines and violent clashes of color. The painter's palette is restricted. The great colorist now contrasts the strength of black with explosions of white and red, and the latter is mainly used as a focal element that balances the composition.
In some large canvases, such as the one that concerns us today, Mariano even renounces to any definition mediated by the title and names his pieces either Painting or Abstraction. In them, the peaceful appearance caused by the absolute predominance of cold tones (especially the blue) is broken by a punctual eruption of reds, drawing the viewer's eye to it and challenges it.
Although little studied yet, one of the most experimental and convulsive phases of Mariano's work lies in this brief period. This Cuban Master's abstraction was, like everything in him, a questioning of the conventional laws of composition, a struggle with the limits, and a declaration of intentions in favor of art research, more than submission to a trend of fashion.
Contrary to popular belief, Mariano Rodríguez did not break with abstraction at the end of the 1950s. In the following five years, he would try to reformulate from the absence of figuration some historical experiences that impacted him. Few of his artworks are more abstract in their trajectory than the political landscapes bequeathed in the 1960s. Oxford (Spy Ship), 1962, to give an example, was resolved using the same chromatic contrast that had generated Abstraction, proposed as a coincidence of the life and death in a landscape.
We are grateful to Beatriz Gago and the Estate of Mariano Rodriguez for the assistance with the cataloguing of this work.
