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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Fundación Arte Cubano for their assistance cataloguing this work.
Window shutters, doors, balconies and stained glass medio puntos compose the dense urban landscape of René Portocarrero’s Paisaje de La Habana. The canvas, part of a larger series of works by Portocarrero depicting the Cuban capital and artist’s hometown, projects an encyclopedic overview of Havana’s eclectic accumulation of architectural styles and details. In fact, although references to actual locations within the city may be identified – for instance, the Catedral de Havana or the Capitolio Nacional – Portocarrero’s Paisaje de La Habana is perhaps best understood as a fictionalized ode to the city, rather than a mapped landscape rooted in physical reality. In this regard, Portocarrero’s painting serves as the visual equivalent of Cuban author Alejo Carpentier’s acclaimed essay and homage to Havana, “La Ciudad de las Columnas (The City of Columns).”
The cacophony of forms in Paisaje de La Habana speaks to the baroque trend that critics have identified as having first emerged in the 1940s in the work of such Cuban artists as Portocarrero and Amelia Peláez, among others. Painted in a rainbow of colors and stacked against the very surface of the picture plane, Portocarrero’s sinuous lines and curves interlock and create a sense of horror vacuii. Indeed, only a narrow strip of blue located just above the arched roofs and tiled cupulas is exempt from Portocarrero’s exuberantly painted details. This visual pause, which simultaneously references the sky above and the sea beyond, anchors Portocarrero’s Paisaje de La Havana as a synthesized and totalizing view of the city.
Susanna Temkin, PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Window shutters, doors, balconies and stained glass medio puntos compose the dense urban landscape of René Portocarrero’s Paisaje de La Habana. The canvas, part of a larger series of works by Portocarrero depicting the Cuban capital and artist’s hometown, projects an encyclopedic overview of Havana’s eclectic accumulation of architectural styles and details. In fact, although references to actual locations within the city may be identified – for instance, the Catedral de Havana or the Capitolio Nacional – Portocarrero’s Paisaje de La Habana is perhaps best understood as a fictionalized ode to the city, rather than a mapped landscape rooted in physical reality. In this regard, Portocarrero’s painting serves as the visual equivalent of Cuban author Alejo Carpentier’s acclaimed essay and homage to Havana, “La Ciudad de las Columnas (The City of Columns).”
The cacophony of forms in Paisaje de La Habana speaks to the baroque trend that critics have identified as having first emerged in the 1940s in the work of such Cuban artists as Portocarrero and Amelia Peláez, among others. Painted in a rainbow of colors and stacked against the very surface of the picture plane, Portocarrero’s sinuous lines and curves interlock and create a sense of horror vacuii. Indeed, only a narrow strip of blue located just above the arched roofs and tiled cupulas is exempt from Portocarrero’s exuberantly painted details. This visual pause, which simultaneously references the sky above and the sea beyond, anchors Portocarrero’s Paisaje de La Havana as a synthesized and totalizing view of the city.
Susanna Temkin, PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University