On the occasion of its next Modern and Contemporary Art auction on Thursday, April 8th, 2021, PIASA is honoring the work of Cuban-born painter and sculptor Augustin Cárdenas.
Born in Cuba in 1927, Agustín Cárdenas showed an early talent for drawing. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in San Alejandro, he turned to woodcarving and had an exhibition in Havana in 1953. After moving to Paris in 1955, Cárdenas had a decisive encounter with André Breton and took part in the Surrealists' exhibitions, notably at the Daniel Cordier Gallery (Paris, 1959), at D'Arcy's Galleries (New York, 1961), and then at the L'Œil Gallery (Paris, 1965). Alongside them, Cárdenas allowed himself to reconnect with his African roots, reinvigorating the spiritual, sensual and lyrical character of his work.
His sculpture, as evidenced by our work, (lot 32) with its smooth, organic forms, evokes the idea of growth and also refers to primitivism. The discovery in the mid-1950s of a Dogon totem pole had prompted Cárdenas to favor vertical statuary. His interest in the work of Arp and Brancusi can also be seen in the taste for fluid rhythms, the principle of metamorphosis and the correlations between the different kingdoms of nature. The talent with which Cárdenas mastered the technique of burned wood is fully apparent here: this sculpture is remarkable for the delicacy of the hollowed-out volumes, the way in which the fulls follow the smooths, but also for the purity of the polished surfaces. Edouard Glissant, poet and friend of Cárdenas, rightly emphasized the organic sensuality of his sculpture: "It is a rare phenomenon in the world of invented forms, a universe that from the outset reveals the organic, the shadow and the light united, the patience through the material, the inexhaustible alliance of what is torrid and what is nocturnal [...]. These vines that I see growing along the totems, all this is the memory of Cárdenas, it is his obstinacy to search. "
Agustin Cardenas (1927-2001)
Untitled, circa 1960
Estimate: 60 000 / 90 000 €
Agustín Cárdenas, who lived almost all his life in France, belonged to the Montparnos community. Besides Edouard Glissant, he was a friend of the painters Wifredo Lam and Joaquim Ferrer, and close to many other literary figures such as José Pierre, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Jean Leymarie, Emile Langui and Alain Jouffroy. Cárdenas, who spent many years in France, returned to live at the end of his life in Havana, where he died in February 2001. He remains one of the masters of modern sculpture, along with Brancusi, Arp, Henry Moore and Giacometti.
