This essay by José Cuneo is on the analysis of the work by Rafael Barradas who died in Montevideo in 1929. Of interest was the artistic reflection and the views by a renowned Uruguayan artist, as Cuneo was in 1930, on another artist that participated from Spain in the historical European avant-garde movements. In his article Cuneo placed Barradas under the category “European artist,” pointing to his capacity to absorb the visual arts artistic climate of Barcelona and the innovations of the old continent. However, Cuneo also believed he discovered other type of influences that were American and Pre-Columbian in nature in some of the last works of Barradas in the so-called “mystic period” of his career. Finally, he reflects on the misunderstanding in the Uruguayan local circles towards his work.

At the time of the writing of this essay in 1930, José Cuneo enjoyed an artistic trajectory that was renown in Uruguay, where he stopped to meditate on the work of Rafael Barradas (1890–1929) a year after his death. As a student on a scholarship, Cuneo had already made several trips to Europe, and especially to France, the stage for the various new avant-garde trends. From its title, Cuneo manifested himself as someone who reflected, as an artist on another artist, an established empathy with his own work through the analysis of the other’s work, especially in relation to the representation of light or chromatic modulation developed by Barradas. The article browsed through the various artistic “schools of through” that emerged in France, their respective periods and artistic debates. In the opinion of the author, the country was transformed into the undisputed center of the visual arts movements starting with the impressionist period.  Cuneo views Barradas as an artist born in Uruguay but who managed to transform himself through impregnated influences derived from the European environment. In short, Barradas was a European artist. He compared him in a specific way with Vincent van Gogh who after leaving the Netherlands becomes a French painter. However, it was the work entitled the “mystic series” created during Barradas’s last years that attracted the author’s attention, for its American and especially Aztec remnants, with its powerful and contorted bodies, the arabesque lines, the play with the planes and the large cyclopean masses. Because of the fascination Cuneo displayed throughout his in-depth analysis on French artistic schools of thought, the author became a link to Uruguayan critics and travelers to Uruguay who, for decades, recognized as fundamental these cultural influences in the Uruguayan context.

For further reading on the Uruguayan artista, please refer to the ICAA digital archive for the  following texts:  “Barradas” (doc. no. 1243461) and “Barradas el uruguayo” (doc. no. 1197352) written by Manuel Abril, “Barradas pintor de eternidad” by Artur Perucho (doc. no. 1243392), “Carta a Rafael Barradas” by Alberto Lasplaces (doc. no. 1250919), “De la Tragedia de la Imagen [Barradas]” (doc. no. 1225969), and “Rafael Barradas” by Vicente Basso Maglio (doc. no.1243440), “Emoción ante Barradas” by Cipriano Santiago Vitureira (doc. no. 1218884), “Los artistas uruguayos en Europa: Rafael Barradas” by Joaquín Torres García (doc. no. 1228429), “El pintor Juan Carlos Figari Castro” by Jorge Páez Vilaró (doc. no. 1228547) and “En torno a Barradas” by Clotilde Luisi (doc. no. 1227809)].