Cagnes Hamlet or Cagnes-sur-Mer Landscape

During his frequent trips to Europe, José Cúneo came into contact with artists and works of art that manifested the novel avant-garde visual languages. Particularly significant was his 1912 visit to a show of Italian futurists in Paris, a city where Cúneo studied with Dutch artist Kees van Dongen, who was close to the fauve artists and the expressionism of the Die Brücke group. Considered part of the planista school—a term coined by art critic Eduardo Dieste in reference to Uruguayan painting from the nineteen-twenties and thirties—Cúneo, like the European schools that influenced him, was inclined to pure and vibrant colors.
In 1926, after a number of months in Paris, where he spent time with Pedro Figari, the artist moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer. While there, he did "plein air" paintings of the small city’s hamlet with its narrow winding streets. The slanted lines and accelerated perspectives in this off-center composition establish spatial relations more topological than geo- graphic. Cúneo is not after a faithful reproduction: In his avant-garde conception, painting is understood as creating reality.