NEW YORK — Rene Portocarrero (Cuban, 1912-1985) was an early pioneer of Cuban art whose artworks, as well as those of his native countrymen, came to greater worldwide attention. He rode a late 20th-century wave that saw contemporary art become more global and saw Cuban and Latin American artists start to gain the recognition they were due.

Portocarrero began painting as a child and was in his early twenties when he had his first exhibition in Havana’s Lyceum in 1934. He was one of the key artists who sparked interest in Cuban modernism. His work and that of other artists from Cuba signified a critical departure from European modernism by depicting scenes that were quintessentially Cuban and used bright colors. Portocarrero was well traveled and spent time in Haiti and Europe before being featured in a major exhibition on Cuban painters at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He earned prestigious art prizes, his work was widely exhibited and his art is sought by private collectors and major museums. Dedicated Latin American art auctions in New York are now annual events and prices have risen steadily for noted artists such as Portocarrero.

He is described as mostly self-taught because although he enrolled at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, he left early. Portocarrero was influenced by Mexican muralists and Surrealism and by Cuban-Spanish baroque art. He created striking drawings and paintings characterized by bold lines, geometric compositional elements and vivid colors that refer to Cuba’s colonial heritage.

Cuban art often leans toward Modernism but is an amalgam of a variety of styles befitting the diaspora of cultures of the island nation. African, South American, European and North American influences are typically evident in many Cuban artworks.

Portocarrero favored a far-reaching and spontaneous approach to his painting technique, often switching mediums from oils to watercolors and pastels as well as ranging across genres and subject matter, from abstracted landscapes to portraits and themes inspired by mythology or religion. Besides painting, he also sculpted and was a muralist as well as a book illustrator. He published two books of his drawings: The Dream and Masks.

Cityscapes and portraits comprise a significant part of his painting oeuvre. “A large part of Portocarrero’s work deals with Spanish colonial subjects and Spanish-Cuban interiors … The search for national and tropical elements is superimposed on the baroque undercurrent which in large measure defines his work,” according to Pan American Art Projects’ website.

An untitled 1944 landscape by Portocarrero, populated with figures, buildings, majestic trees and animals, achieved $55,000 plus the buyer’s premium in October 2017 at Willow Fine Art Gallery. This painting’s style and motifs are characteristic for the artist. “He painted tirelessly since his childhood and never planned any of his work. In his spontaneity, he had no idea what work he would create until the brush was about to strike the canvas,” according to the auctioneer’s catalog description.

Some of his landscapes are lavishly composed, with buildings on top of buildings in a colorful sea of doors and building outlines that became a common motif in his art. A 1954 oil-on-board city view of Havana, Cuba titled Paisaje de La Habana seems more like an interpretive representation rather than an actual scene, and likely references the city’s diverse architecture. The painting sold for $18,000 plus the buyer’s premium in March 2020 at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries.

He created several watercolor-based works in the 1950s with fragmented geometric-shaped forms suspended in space, often in groups, likely to indicate their relationship to each other as part of a set or a family. He reportedly created this series to allow himself to explore dreamlike or Surrealistic imagery. A fine example from this period was a 1953 gouache, watercolor, ink and oil on heavy paper that went out at $27,500 plus the buyer’s premium in September 2022 at DuMouchelles.

Portocarrero is also celebrated for his portraits of women, a recurring motif for him. In some of these, he combined his interest in religious subject matter, such as in a 1947 pastel and ink rendering of a Madonna and child, which brought $20,000 plus the buyer’s premium in October 2018 at Oakridge Auction Gallery.

He also favored stark representations, such as in a 1960 oil-on-canvas portrait of a woman that brought $16,000 plus the buyer’s premium in November 2019 at Kodner Galleries Inc.  In works such as this one, done in the horror vacui style (which roughly translates to fear of empty spaces), he paints women with an almost ghostly white hue and intersperses dabs of color amid empty spaces in an explosion of chromatic composition.

Rene Portocarrero has long been one of Cuba’s vanguard artists, whose appeal stretched far beyond his country’s borders. His artworks have steadily increased in value and continue to attract new fans and collectors.