Germán Cueto

Cueto was part of the avant-garde movement known as Estridentismo, an aesthetic proposal merely literary, its aim was no less than a reshaping of Mexican literature and art from the ground up, looking squarely at the new modernity. They forged close literary ties with Spanish Ultraistas and the French Surrealists. They held literary and artistic court at the Café Europa -wich they rebaptized the Café de Nadie (Nobody's Café)- on whose walls hung paintings and drawings by Fermín Revueltas, Leopoldo Méndez and  Jean Charlot, along with the masks by the sculptor Germán Cueto, with their echoes of Picasso's experiments with painted cardboard. Cueto used unconventional materials to move Mexican sculpture into the modern era, among them copper and tin sheet metal, glass and plastic beads, and paper and cardboard, cut, perforated, and decorated with strident colours.