by Antonio Mejías-Rentas
Mario’s Carreño’s Fuego en el batey, de/from 1943
ART FOR SALE: Several records for Latin American artists were set at New York auctions last month, although at least one auction house recorded its lowest sales totals in recent years.
Latin American works fetched more than $11 million in the strongest of the auctions—at Christie’s—five world records were set. The three top-sellers were from the 1940s, a period rarely seen at auction.
A 1943 masterpiece of Cuban modernism by Mario Carreño titled Fuego en el batey, believed to have been lost, was the top seller at $2.1 million. Leonara Carrington’s The Giantess, at $1.42 million, set a record for the English-born painter who settled in Mexico. She is still active at 93.
A 1941 self-portrait by Mexican master Diego Rivera solUfor$1.02 million.
Other records were set for Brazilian artists Helio Oiticica and Lygia Pape and for Cuban René Portocarrero.
Sales were weaker, in contrast, at the sale in Sotheby’s, where the total take of $6.7 million was a fraction of the house’s Latin American sale in November, which brought in $16.7 million.
Niña con rebozo, by Diego Rivera, was the top seller at $794,500. It was followed by Construccion portuaria, a 1942 painting by Uruguay’s Joaquín Torres García, which took $626,500.
Five records were set, all for under $54,000, for artists from Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico.
MORE iAZUUUUCA R,: A retooled version of a popular Celie Cruz musical has returned to the stage in Miami.
Celia: la vida y la música de Celia Cruz is on stage at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Theater through June 21. It tells the story of Cuba’s best known female singer, who died in her New Jersey home in 2003.
The current production has new costumes and choreography and several added characters, including musicians Tito Puente and Johnny Pacheco.
Celia opened in New York’s off-Broadway district in the summer of 2007 and has since toured in Latin America and Europe. Anissa Gathers now plays Cruz. Isidro Infante is the show’s musical director.
In other theater news: New York’s Puerto Rican Travelling Theater is currently reviving Borinquen vive en El Barrio, a play by Tere Martínez that the company premiered at last year’s Festival de Teatro Latino. The play is again part of this year’s festival, which continues June 18 with Marga López’s Long Island Iced Latina and Bill Santiago’s Pardon my Spanglish on June 19. Hispanic Link.
