Mario Carreno, Cuban, 1913 to 1999, crayon painting on paper depicting an abstract composition, 1956. Signed and dated, lower right. Provenance: the private collection, Habana. Completed with a certificate of authenticity of Louis Lastra Fine Art, signed by Luis E Lastra, Historian and Art Critic, associate member I.S.A., date of examination October 22, 2001, date of certificate october 22, 2001. Mario Carreno is known for Abstract, modernist figure painting, illustration, murals. A modernist figurative Latin-American painter and magazine illustrator, whose clients included House and Garden, Interiors and Norte, Mario Carreno was born in Havana but lived for extended periods of time in New York City and finally in Chile. He studied art in his native country at San Alejandro Academy; in Madrid, Spain beginning 1931 at the San Fernando School. There he met Pablo Neruda and his circle of intellectual friends including Federico Lorca and Rafael Alberti. To earn a living, he worked as a graphic designer, but those were tough times because of the impending Spanish Civil War. In 1935, he went to Mexico, where he worked with what he described as the great muralists including Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and José Orozco. Influenced by these strong nationalists, he began injecting his own Latin American heritage into his artwork. One of a kind artwork.