Federico Cantú

Just as Rodríguez Lozano, Federico Cantú felt a special attraction to the work of Picasso, and his influence is felt not only in the subject matter, but also in the compositional treatment of the production of several Mexican artists. Picasso and his paintings were known and studied in detail in Paris and New York by Cantú. Arlequines is, curiously, the same theme as several Picaso engravings which are in the collection at the National School of Fine Arts, where Cantú might have seen them long before he did the decorations for the bar Papillón in Mexico City, precisely with the theme "The Harlequin's life". At one time the American collector MacKinley Helm showed Cantú's drawings to Diego Rivera, who, wanting to scoff at them, said he "was the poor people's Picasso". What can be said is that the subject matter has a genealogy that goes back directly to the most influential Spanish painter of the XX century, this painting in Blaisten Collection also shows the personal style, with sinuous and elegant lines that Cantú was able to include in his pictorial trade. The piece was shown in 1936, in the monograph exhibition dedicated to him by the legendary Galería de Arte Mexicano.