Alejandro Cañedo, (Untitled) Look Carefully and Look Again

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And what are you to look for? Not random swipes, as if cleaning one’s brush on the verso. Nor the … Read more And what are you to look for? Not random swipes, as if cleaning one’s brush on the verso. Nor the whisps of cigarette smoke wafting upward from below. No. Do look again for an exquisitely subtle and alluring female nude. “Oh, yes, I see her now,” you smile. One must add, “Isn’t she fun?”
This sophisticated work was done by a very sophisticated man. Born in Mexico City of a Mexican father and a mother from the U.S., Alejandro de Cañedo was most fortunate to begin his formal art studies at age 15 in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beau-Arts in Paris, renowned to this day for its excellence.
At 21, he was off to Rome to continue his studies, where in 1927, the Mexican government appointed him to be an attaché to their embassy there. The following year, he exhibited for the first time in Rome, then around Europe, and while still in his 20s, in New York. Illustration work followed, as well as exhibitions of his drawings, watercolors and eventually oil paintings, throughout the 1940s.
In 1949 Gumps, the renown San Francisco store, had discovered him and held an exhibition of his work, the first of many. By the 1950s, he had made California his home, exhibiting in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, particularly in Beverly Hills. His work remained in demand through the 1960s. At age 76, he passed away in West Hollywood. See less