From the light beam to the canvas, led by the hand of the artist, the coloring treat springs up. Therefore, the thing is that the telluric tinge of the brown, the stillness of the green, the depth of the blue, or the expressiveness of the yellow could sometimes be thought of as arbitrary associations. However, when it comes to the work of an alchemist in terms of a plastic language such as that of Mario Carreño, it would be necessary to consider nuances as substances, and the volumes as plethoric features of allegories, winks, and ploys of tricks quite typical from the author.
A creator who seems to have gone through, with looseness and satisfaction, the paths of art history coming down from the European Renaissance, through the imprint of the Dominican Jaime Colson and the Mexican Muralism, throughout the geometric abstractionism and metaphysical painting, thus foretelling a surrealist aesthetic. A plurality of languages that Carreño manages to synthesize in every creative stage with his own revealing seal.
Cosmopolitan and daring in his work, Mario Carreño was a man of his homeland and his time. He managed to embody, with genuine allegories, our own embracing cultural roots, while capturing the excesses of wars suffered by humanity at that time, without avoiding the hackneyed anecdotal scenes.
In his creations, the power or the passivity stemming out from the figures, atmospheres, or areas of color in the abstract stage, surprise and captivate; while at a time, they invite us to delve into the plastic surface in search of motifs that lead to a reading or an interpretation of the work.
However, his restless spirit led him to explore engraving as well and, beyond the two-dimensionality, he erected sculptures of exquisite workmanship in which he broadens the themes addressed as if using a painter’s palette.
Then the versatility and the singular authenticity, of which he also was a proponent in artistic teaching, are two of the grateful blessings in the work of this creator of America, which is ever alive, in a perpetual pact with art and humanity.
