Germán Cueto

Biography

Germán Cueto was born on February 9, 1893, in Mexico City, Mexico. He was a Mexican artist, sculptor, puppeteer, and set designer. Cueto was among the first generation of artists active after the Mexican Revolution. Between 1927 and 1932, he lived in Europe, where his work developed a distinctly European and more abstract character, especially in sculpture. Cueto created masks and sculptures from a variety of materials, including wood, wire, plastic, sheet metal, ceramics, and electric wire, employing both traditional and unconventional media. As an avant-garde artist, he is regarded as the first Mexican abstract artist. Although he held several exhibitions in Mexico during his lifetime, including a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, Cueto did not achieve the same level of recognition as many of his contemporaries, partly because he did not follow the dominant themes and styles of Mexican muralism at the time. Germán Cueto died on February 14, 1975, in Mexico City.