Germán Cueto

Biography

In 1924 the masks of Germán Cueto were shown at the “Café de Nadie” in Mexico City: the faces of his Stridentist friends, made of cardboard and plaster. One of the masks was dedicated to the printmaker Leopoldo Méndez. Cueto later made more than a thousand such faces, if the researchers’ estimate is to be believed.

He was born in Mexico City on 9 February 1893; some sources give 8 February. His father came from an educated family from Cantabria in Spain, and his mother was Mexican. Cueto began studying chemistry, but the Revolution interrupted his studies, and in the 1910s he found himself in Spain. There his cousin, the painter María Blanchard, introduced him to Cubism and modern art; he himself regarded his meeting with the sculptor Fidencio Nava as the reason he chose the path of an artist. Later his knowledge of chemistry proved useful: all his life he tried out unusual materials. In 1918 Cueto returned to Mexico and enrolled at the Academy of San Carlos, but he disliked its formalism and soon left. In 1919 he married the artist Lola Cueto, whom he had met at the academy. From 1922 he assisted the sculptor Ignacio Asúnsolo, who was working on sculpture for the building of the Secretaría de Educación Pública, the Ministry of Public Education, and then he taught at art schools.

In 1922 Cueto’s shed-studio became a meeting place for the Stridentists, an avant-garde group that included Manuel Maples Arce and Germán List Arzubide. The movement called for a break with academicism and for bringing art closer to life in the modern city. In 1925–1926 Cueto made a terracotta mask for List Arzubide. In 1927 the movement fell apart when Heriberto Jara, the governor of Veracruz who had sponsored the Stridentists, lost his post. The same year Cueto’s play “Comedia sin solución” (“Comedy Without a Solution”) was published.

From 1927 to 1932 the family lived in Paris, with trips to the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. Through María Blanchard Cueto met Julio González, Constantin Brâncuși, Angelina Beloff, Joaquín Torres García and Jacques Lipchitz. He joined the Cercle et Carré group, in which Mondrian, Kandinsky and Arp were also found. In Paris he exhibited in 1928, 1929 and 1930; in 1931, at the Salon des Surindépendants, he showed nine sculptures. He became interested in sculpture built from planes, like that of González and Pablo Gargallo. After Blanchard’s death in 1932, against the background of the economic crisis in Europe, the family returned to Mexico.

At home, artistic nationalism prevailed, far from the Parisian avant-garde. Cueto received almost no commissions for state monuments, his works did not fit heroic and folkloric subjects, and in 1947 he decided to take part in no more competitions. His art sold poorly, and he kept apart from his colleagues. He worked for the theatre: at the request of Carlos Chávez he devised characters for an educational puppet theatre, made masks for productions, and was a friend of the composer Silvestre Revueltas. In 1948 he directed the Dance Institute at the Palacio de Bellas Artes for a time.

He cut and bent sheet metal into anthropomorphic figures in which emptiness works as part of the form. “Tehuana”, of sheet metal about 110 centimetres high, is in the Museo de Arte Moderno. “El Nahual” (1947–1948) is woven from wire and beads. The bronze “Circunvolución” won him an award at the sculpture biennial of 1967–1968. For the Gustavsberg porcelain factory in Sweden he made an iron sculpture covered in enamel (1954), and in Helsinki he worked on ceramics for the Arabia workshop. For the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City he created “El Corredor” (“The Runner”) in front of the stadium at the university campus. He taught as well: from 1956 to 1959 at La Esmeralda school, and from 1960 enamelling at the Escuela de Artesanías de la Ciudadela. He received an honourable mention at the national sculpture biennial in 1963 and 1964. The 1965 retrospective at the newly opened Museo de Arte Moderno was his first major museum recognition. From 1968 he was a member of the Academia de Artes, one of its founders.

Cueto died in Mexico City on 14 February 1975. A large posthumous retrospective was held at the same museum in 1981.