Mario Carreño (1913-1999)

“Alma” to whom this work is dedicated, refers to Alma Hubner Vidal, a young journalist in New York in the 1940s working for the magazine Norte whose editor, José Losada, was one of the advisors for the groundbreaking exhibition, Modern Cuban Painters, held at MoMA in 1944. Born in Chile, the young Alma and her cousin, María Luisa Bermudez, known as “Marita” met Mario Carreño and other Cuban modernists at the exhibition’s opening. Soon after, Maria Luisa, married Carreño in 1945. In the 1950s through the 1960s, Alma lived and worked in New York for the United Nations. She acquired this work and that of other Cuban artists in the 1950s.