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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Mr. Ramón Vázquez for confirming the authenticity of this work.
Mesa en interior (Table in an Interior), 1943, by the 20th century Cuban master Amelia Peláez, is an intensely personal work, which the artist kept until the early 1950s, when it was sold from her studio. This oil on tempera waivers between an architectonic solidity suggested by its muted tonal planes, and a graphic lyricism evident in the sinuous black lines that play across its surface. Both formally rigorous and psychologically complex, it is a quintessential expression of the artist's life-long struggle to express a Cuban identity. What makes this work unique, however, is how the melancholic color scheme combines with a virtuoso handling of paint to convey an almost Symbolist sense of emotional turbulence and transcendence.
Peláez was deeply ambitious artistically and set for herself challenging pictorial goals that she worked unceasingly to fulfill. Like many Cuban artists of her generation, she longed to be part of an international modernism. Born in 1896 in the town of Yaguajay near Cuba's northern coast, Amelia Peláez y del Casal came from an upper middle-class Creole family. A great source of family pride was her maternal uncle, the Symbolist poet Julián del Casal, and although Peláez never met him (he died in 1893), he remained an influence in her life. Her mother was a schoolteacher who supported her daughter's interest in painting, which began at an early age. In 1915 the family moved to La Víbora, a suburb of Havana.
The following year, Peláez enrolled in Havana's Academia de San Alejandro, where she received a technically solid but traditional art education. After her graduation in 1924 she spent six months at the Art Students League in New York with a travel grant from San Alejandro. In New York she continued to paint the melancholic landscapes in tones of blue, grey, and brown that she was already known for in Cuba (and which to an extent are continued in Mesa en interior). Realizing that she needed to expand her horizons in order to advance her creative potential, she left for Paris around that time accompanied by the Cuban ethnographer Lydia Cabrera.
In 1934, Peláez returned to Cuba after nearly ten years in Europe, to resume her career there. She moved back into the house in La Víbora with her mother and a number of unmarried sisters and fashioned for herself an austere lifestyle that enabled her to dedicate the utmost time and concentration to her work. Peláez's study of European modernism had reinforced her early interest in still-life painting (although she did and would continue to portray women) and upon her return she explored it afresh with an eye towards incorporating colors and objects that spoke of a Cuban identity. In a completely unique tour de force, Peláez assimilated the vibrant color of Seurat, the studied structure of Cézanne, the decorative flatness of Matisse, the multiple viewpoints of Picasso and Braque's Cubism--even Ingres' linear elegance can be detected.
The home was much more than a mere residence for Peláez. Studio, prison, sanctuary, symbol of Cuba and place of dreams; its rooms, garden and furnishings served as her lifelong muse. The house contained architectural and decorative details that were specific Cuban adaptations: iron grille-work, stained-glass windows (fan lights), mamparas (half-doors), ornate carved capitals, cornices and railings, multi-colored ceramic tiles, etc. The Victorian-style décor contributed further to a dizzying sense of horror vacui: wicker furniture with curlicue flourishes, glass cabinets filled with bric-a-brac, doilies, chandeliers, mirrors, gilt ceramic vases, silver candelabras--even the interior garden contained an excess of tropical plants and caged pet birds.
Over and over Peláez painted her domestic realm. Her vision is kaleidoscopic; details break apart and reconfigure themselves into abstract patterns locked onto the surface in delicate crochet-like designs that have the psychological density of prison bars. Suffused with a radiant tropical light, Peláez's secular spaces can appear reminiscent of church interiors filtered through stained glass. Fruit in dishes or girls quietly reading seem not so much sanctified under such light as made more mysterious by it. Claustrophobia and personal freedom--this is the dialogue that lurks underneath Peláez's work and that transforms it from mere motif to Symbolist poetry.
Three-dimensional space has collapsed in Mesa en interior and walls, ceiling, windows, furniture, objects, cloth are united in a single plane. The Cuban poet and curator, Juan Antonio Molina, wrote of a revelatory visit he made to the house in La Víbora where he imagined that the artist's pictorial point of view came from lying on her tiled floor and looking up: "And that's why nothing in her paintings is like what we see when we are standing up but like what we picture from the floor-tables, landscapes, fruit, curtains, windows, wicker furniture." (1) This unorthodox and poetic explanation captures the sense of vertigo one can experience looking at a work by Peláez. Such basic questions as--are we looking up or down?--seem to be unanswerable in Mesa en interior. Is the three-pronged design in the center a stained glass window, a flower, or a painted tile on the floor? Is the white rectangle towards the upper left of the painting a reflective mirror on a near-by wall or a window on a far-away door? It is as if we are experiencing the same sense of spatial disorientation as Molina did walking through her house: "At the end of the corridor there was a spot of blinding light. It seemed as if I were walking toward the end of the world." (2)
Mesa en interior is truly spectacular due to its nuanced and articulate paint handling. The mixture of oil and tempera on paper (mounted on canvas) allows for a multi-layered surface that provides insight into the drama of the artist's placement of line and color. Upon close inspection one realizes that there is a dazzling spectrum of tones within the limited color range. The planes of color are far from flat and the translucency of the tempera medium reveals each brushstroke. Discrete areas of descriptive form (tabletops, fabric folds, walls) open up and bleed into each other, reminiscent of Cézanne's use of passage. Underdrawing remains visible in places, such as the bowl of fruit at the center, infusing the composition with an element of intellectual excitement: a ghostly remnant of the artists' decision-making process. These markings, along with the shifting prismatic color application, render Mesa en interior a dynamic testimony to the on-going vitality of the still-life genre.
Peláez retained a youthful energy and enthusiasm until her death in 1968. Along with Wifredo Lam, Peláez was hailed as one of the most important painters from Cuba and the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired a number of her works early on. Her work was included in significant biennials; São Paulo in 1951, Venice in 1952, and the Inter-American Biennial in Mexico City in 1958. A legend in her own country, Peláez influenced future generations of Cuban artists who, like René Portocarrero, continued to find inspiration in the Baroque exuberance of Havana's architectural decoration. Impervious to her many awards, commissions and exhibitions, the modest and shy Peláez ultimately made the world take notice of her small slice of paradise in La Víbora.
Susan L. Aberth, Annandale-on-Hudson, 2006
(1) J. A. Molina, 'Estrada Palma 261, Still Life with Dream about Amelia Pelaez,' The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, (Cuba theme issue), 1996, p. 231.
(2)Ibid, p. 232.
Mesa en interior (Table in an Interior), 1943, by the 20th century Cuban master Amelia Peláez, is an intensely personal work, which the artist kept until the early 1950s, when it was sold from her studio. This oil on tempera waivers between an architectonic solidity suggested by its muted tonal planes, and a graphic lyricism evident in the sinuous black lines that play across its surface. Both formally rigorous and psychologically complex, it is a quintessential expression of the artist's life-long struggle to express a Cuban identity. What makes this work unique, however, is how the melancholic color scheme combines with a virtuoso handling of paint to convey an almost Symbolist sense of emotional turbulence and transcendence.
Peláez was deeply ambitious artistically and set for herself challenging pictorial goals that she worked unceasingly to fulfill. Like many Cuban artists of her generation, she longed to be part of an international modernism. Born in 1896 in the town of Yaguajay near Cuba's northern coast, Amelia Peláez y del Casal came from an upper middle-class Creole family. A great source of family pride was her maternal uncle, the Symbolist poet Julián del Casal, and although Peláez never met him (he died in 1893), he remained an influence in her life. Her mother was a schoolteacher who supported her daughter's interest in painting, which began at an early age. In 1915 the family moved to La Víbora, a suburb of Havana.
The following year, Peláez enrolled in Havana's Academia de San Alejandro, where she received a technically solid but traditional art education. After her graduation in 1924 she spent six months at the Art Students League in New York with a travel grant from San Alejandro. In New York she continued to paint the melancholic landscapes in tones of blue, grey, and brown that she was already known for in Cuba (and which to an extent are continued in Mesa en interior). Realizing that she needed to expand her horizons in order to advance her creative potential, she left for Paris around that time accompanied by the Cuban ethnographer Lydia Cabrera.
In 1934, Peláez returned to Cuba after nearly ten years in Europe, to resume her career there. She moved back into the house in La Víbora with her mother and a number of unmarried sisters and fashioned for herself an austere lifestyle that enabled her to dedicate the utmost time and concentration to her work. Peláez's study of European modernism had reinforced her early interest in still-life painting (although she did and would continue to portray women) and upon her return she explored it afresh with an eye towards incorporating colors and objects that spoke of a Cuban identity. In a completely unique tour de force, Peláez assimilated the vibrant color of Seurat, the studied structure of Cézanne, the decorative flatness of Matisse, the multiple viewpoints of Picasso and Braque's Cubism--even Ingres' linear elegance can be detected.
The home was much more than a mere residence for Peláez. Studio, prison, sanctuary, symbol of Cuba and place of dreams; its rooms, garden and furnishings served as her lifelong muse. The house contained architectural and decorative details that were specific Cuban adaptations: iron grille-work, stained-glass windows (fan lights), mamparas (half-doors), ornate carved capitals, cornices and railings, multi-colored ceramic tiles, etc. The Victorian-style décor contributed further to a dizzying sense of horror vacui: wicker furniture with curlicue flourishes, glass cabinets filled with bric-a-brac, doilies, chandeliers, mirrors, gilt ceramic vases, silver candelabras--even the interior garden contained an excess of tropical plants and caged pet birds.
Over and over Peláez painted her domestic realm. Her vision is kaleidoscopic; details break apart and reconfigure themselves into abstract patterns locked onto the surface in delicate crochet-like designs that have the psychological density of prison bars. Suffused with a radiant tropical light, Peláez's secular spaces can appear reminiscent of church interiors filtered through stained glass. Fruit in dishes or girls quietly reading seem not so much sanctified under such light as made more mysterious by it. Claustrophobia and personal freedom--this is the dialogue that lurks underneath Peláez's work and that transforms it from mere motif to Symbolist poetry.
Three-dimensional space has collapsed in Mesa en interior and walls, ceiling, windows, furniture, objects, cloth are united in a single plane. The Cuban poet and curator, Juan Antonio Molina, wrote of a revelatory visit he made to the house in La Víbora where he imagined that the artist's pictorial point of view came from lying on her tiled floor and looking up: "And that's why nothing in her paintings is like what we see when we are standing up but like what we picture from the floor-tables, landscapes, fruit, curtains, windows, wicker furniture." (1) This unorthodox and poetic explanation captures the sense of vertigo one can experience looking at a work by Peláez. Such basic questions as--are we looking up or down?--seem to be unanswerable in Mesa en interior. Is the three-pronged design in the center a stained glass window, a flower, or a painted tile on the floor? Is the white rectangle towards the upper left of the painting a reflective mirror on a near-by wall or a window on a far-away door? It is as if we are experiencing the same sense of spatial disorientation as Molina did walking through her house: "At the end of the corridor there was a spot of blinding light. It seemed as if I were walking toward the end of the world." (2)
Mesa en interior is truly spectacular due to its nuanced and articulate paint handling. The mixture of oil and tempera on paper (mounted on canvas) allows for a multi-layered surface that provides insight into the drama of the artist's placement of line and color. Upon close inspection one realizes that there is a dazzling spectrum of tones within the limited color range. The planes of color are far from flat and the translucency of the tempera medium reveals each brushstroke. Discrete areas of descriptive form (tabletops, fabric folds, walls) open up and bleed into each other, reminiscent of Cézanne's use of passage. Underdrawing remains visible in places, such as the bowl of fruit at the center, infusing the composition with an element of intellectual excitement: a ghostly remnant of the artists' decision-making process. These markings, along with the shifting prismatic color application, render Mesa en interior a dynamic testimony to the on-going vitality of the still-life genre.
Peláez retained a youthful energy and enthusiasm until her death in 1968. Along with Wifredo Lam, Peláez was hailed as one of the most important painters from Cuba and the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired a number of her works early on. Her work was included in significant biennials; São Paulo in 1951, Venice in 1952, and the Inter-American Biennial in Mexico City in 1958. A legend in her own country, Peláez influenced future generations of Cuban artists who, like René Portocarrero, continued to find inspiration in the Baroque exuberance of Havana's architectural decoration. Impervious to her many awards, commissions and exhibitions, the modest and shy Peláez ultimately made the world take notice of her small slice of paradise in La Víbora.
Susan L. Aberth, Annandale-on-Hudson, 2006
(1) J. A. Molina, 'Estrada Palma 261, Still Life with Dream about Amelia Pelaez,' The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, (Cuba theme issue), 1996, p. 231.
(2)Ibid, p. 232.