Active
Mario Carreño, Colonial Patio, 1943
Asset value
525.250 €
Issue price per Splint
50 €
Total number of Splints
10.505
Investment horizon in years
2 to 4
Return-to-Risk Assessment
8/10
Since launch June ‘25
+0.0%
Main reasons to invest
Return Potential📈: An investment of 500 EUR could reach an estimated value of 1,037 EUR in 4 years.
Cost-to-Return Ratio⚖️: With just 2.4% annual total costs (including exit fees), your net profit could be 20.0% per year.
Rarest and Most Sought-After Period 🌺 : Painted in 1943, this work stems from Carreño’s most valuable decade. Six of his top auction results are from this year, and early 1940s paintings rarely surface, making this a prime acquisition from his most critically and commercially celebrated period.
Description
Investment Thesis 📝
Strong Return Opportunity Backed by Institutional Provenance
This investment is modeled over a 4-year horizon, leveraging normalized auction data and conservative projections for MoMA-exhibited Carreño works:
Balanced Scenario (CAGR, 2025–2029):
→ €1,111,545 | CAGR: 20% p.a.
Ambitious Scenario (CAGR, 2025–2029):
→ €1,631,053 | CAGR: 32.1% p.a.
Works by Carreño that have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York have historically sold for about 3.6 times more than similar works not shown there. MoMA is one of the world’s most prestigious art museums, and this exposure, combined with Carreño’s institutional history, underpins a robust risk-return profile.
Risk Profile and Volatility Benchmarking
Risk modeling applies the volatility of the Artprice100 index, resulting in a standard deviation of 22.2%. Based on a Value at Risk (VaR) model, there is a 95% probability that the value exceeds €559,600 after 5 years—slightly above the acquisition price.
Attractive Entry with Validated Fair Value
The asset reflects a 21.7% discount to fair value, benchmarked against the inflation-adjusted 2006 auction of a comparable Carreño painting.
Art Historical Importance and Rarity
“Colonial Patio” was last publicly shown at MoMA’s 1944 “Modern Cuban Painters” exhibition. Only 130 Carreño paintings have sold at auction since 2000—this work represents a rare opportunity from his most prized period.
Strong Return Opportunity Backed by Institutional Provenance
This investment is modeled over a 4-year horizon, leveraging normalized auction data and conservative projections for MoMA-exhibited Carreño works:
Balanced Scenario (CAGR, 2025–2029):
→ €1,111,545 | CAGR: 20% p.a.
Ambitious Scenario (CAGR, 2025–2029):
→ €1,631,053 | CAGR: 32.1% p.a.
Works by Carreño that have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York have historically sold for about 3.6 times more than similar works not shown there. MoMA is one of the world’s most prestigious art museums, and this exposure, combined with Carreño’s institutional history, underpins a robust risk-return profile.
Risk Profile and Volatility Benchmarking
Risk modeling applies the volatility of the Artprice100 index, resulting in a standard deviation of 22.2%. Based on a Value at Risk (VaR) model, there is a 95% probability that the value exceeds €559,600 after 5 years—slightly above the acquisition price.
Attractive Entry with Validated Fair Value
The asset reflects a 21.7% discount to fair value, benchmarked against the inflation-adjusted 2006 auction of a comparable Carreño painting.
Art Historical Importance and Rarity
“Colonial Patio” was last publicly shown at MoMA’s 1944 “Modern Cuban Painters” exhibition. Only 130 Carreño paintings have sold at auction since 2000—this work represents a rare opportunity from his most prized period.
Exit Options at Maturity 🚪
We will manage the exit strategy in collaboration with Artemundi, ensuring the best possible outcome based on market conditions. The painting may be sold to a private collector or offered at auction. Both options will be assessed for return maximization at exit.
We will manage the exit strategy in collaboration with Artemundi, ensuring the best possible outcome based on market conditions. The painting may be sold to a private collector or offered at auction. Both options will be assessed for return maximization at exit.
Why Invest in This Category? 🎨
For centuries, art has offered cultural and financial value. Mid-career and modern artists, especially those with institutional backing, present an attractive risk/return balance and growing collector demand—particularly within Latin American modernism.
For centuries, art has offered cultural and financial value. Mid-career and modern artists, especially those with institutional backing, present an attractive risk/return balance and growing collector demand—particularly within Latin American modernism.
Why Invest in This Asset? 💎
Cuban born Mario Carreño was one of the shaping artists of Latin-American and especially Caribbean art in the 20th century. Known for his dynamic style that blended modernism with Afro-Cuban themes and Latin American identity, Carreño had studied at the San Alejandro Academy and later continued his education in Madrid and Paris. Here, he absorbed the influences of European avant-garde movements, especially Surrealism and Cubism. By the 1940s, Carreño had emerged as a key figure in the Cuban modernist movement, alongside artists like Wifredo Lam. His works from this time feature vibrant scenes of Cuban life, folklore, and sugarcane workers, evolving later into geometric abstraction. His work was exhibited internationally, and he received multiple awards, including Chile’s National Art Prize in 1982, where he lived until his passing in 1999.
His work adorns some of the most prestigious collections of Latin American art and is frequently included in renowned exhibitions including at the Museum of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, Museum of Fine Art Houston, Centre Pompidou Paris and the Venice Biennale. When returning to Cuba in 1941, Carreño “was filled with a burning, driving impetus, eager to grapple with the artistic problems and possibilities of his native soil.” For Carreño one of those artistic problems and possibilities was Havana's Spanish colonial architecture, which he admired and studied. In the idyllic Colonial Patio, his most ambitious on the subject, Carreño paid tribute to the Spanish colonial architecture’s most alluring space, its interior patio or atrium. Made up of masonry and plants, light and air, this space offered its inhabitants a private area for relaxation, conversation and play. A place where culture and nature, interior and exterior, the personal and the collective intermingled.
Carreño expresses all of the aspects of the Cuban interior patio in a personal and pleasing visual language, adapted from various European sources ranging from Renaissance and Baroque painting to Renoir and Picasso. The lush, overflowing composition echoes the splendour and abundance of the tropical climate of the island and at the same time juxtaposed the poor and sober reality of Cuban life in the 40s.
Mario Carreño is the most versatile, learned, and courageous of the new generation,” Alfred H. Barr, Jr. declared on the occasion of the 1944 landmark exhibition, Modern Cuban Painters, which he organized for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. As the present work and other paintings from this decade constitute Carreño’s most celebrated body of work and an outstanding contribution to the development of Cuban modernism, the present work was included in the exhibition. Here it was shown for the last time to the public before resurfacing at an auction in the 90’s, which makes this work particularly attractive. In the meantime, Modern and Contemporary Cuban artists grew in numbers and importance and are recognized as a crucial movement of Latin American art. More recently and following a rising market for Cuban art, auction houses such as Bonhams start to dedicate entire sales to the movement.
However, works by Carreño rarely come to the auction easel and connoisseurs and collectors have to resort to private sales and specialized art dealerships to get hold of a work by the Cuban artist. Since 2000 only 130 paintings by the artist sold at auction and turn his scarce market appearances into a sought-after occasion. Carreño’s paintings generate a turnover of over 17.5 million USD and account for 91% of his auction market. However, as paintings make up only for 54% of works sold, the paintings category - albeit rarely sold at auction - is the motor of the artist’s market.
The present work created in 1943 is a prime example of Carreño’s ‘neo-classical’ style from the late 1930s and early 1940s and combines his Cuban artistic heritage with European Baroque nuances and Modern influences from Renoir to Picasso. Actually, the early 40s are Carreño’s best-selling period and the six highest prices paid for a painting by the artist were all for works from 1943: The bold coloring and gigantic figures in lavishly filled compositions, in the same manner as the present work, are the most sought-after creations by the artist.
Cuban born Mario Carreño was one of the shaping artists of Latin-American and especially Caribbean art in the 20th century. Known for his dynamic style that blended modernism with Afro-Cuban themes and Latin American identity, Carreño had studied at the San Alejandro Academy and later continued his education in Madrid and Paris. Here, he absorbed the influences of European avant-garde movements, especially Surrealism and Cubism. By the 1940s, Carreño had emerged as a key figure in the Cuban modernist movement, alongside artists like Wifredo Lam. His works from this time feature vibrant scenes of Cuban life, folklore, and sugarcane workers, evolving later into geometric abstraction. His work was exhibited internationally, and he received multiple awards, including Chile’s National Art Prize in 1982, where he lived until his passing in 1999.
His work adorns some of the most prestigious collections of Latin American art and is frequently included in renowned exhibitions including at the Museum of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, Museum of Fine Art Houston, Centre Pompidou Paris and the Venice Biennale. When returning to Cuba in 1941, Carreño “was filled with a burning, driving impetus, eager to grapple with the artistic problems and possibilities of his native soil.” For Carreño one of those artistic problems and possibilities was Havana's Spanish colonial architecture, which he admired and studied. In the idyllic Colonial Patio, his most ambitious on the subject, Carreño paid tribute to the Spanish colonial architecture’s most alluring space, its interior patio or atrium. Made up of masonry and plants, light and air, this space offered its inhabitants a private area for relaxation, conversation and play. A place where culture and nature, interior and exterior, the personal and the collective intermingled.
Carreño expresses all of the aspects of the Cuban interior patio in a personal and pleasing visual language, adapted from various European sources ranging from Renaissance and Baroque painting to Renoir and Picasso. The lush, overflowing composition echoes the splendour and abundance of the tropical climate of the island and at the same time juxtaposed the poor and sober reality of Cuban life in the 40s.
Mario Carreño is the most versatile, learned, and courageous of the new generation,” Alfred H. Barr, Jr. declared on the occasion of the 1944 landmark exhibition, Modern Cuban Painters, which he organized for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. As the present work and other paintings from this decade constitute Carreño’s most celebrated body of work and an outstanding contribution to the development of Cuban modernism, the present work was included in the exhibition. Here it was shown for the last time to the public before resurfacing at an auction in the 90’s, which makes this work particularly attractive. In the meantime, Modern and Contemporary Cuban artists grew in numbers and importance and are recognized as a crucial movement of Latin American art. More recently and following a rising market for Cuban art, auction houses such as Bonhams start to dedicate entire sales to the movement.
However, works by Carreño rarely come to the auction easel and connoisseurs and collectors have to resort to private sales and specialized art dealerships to get hold of a work by the Cuban artist. Since 2000 only 130 paintings by the artist sold at auction and turn his scarce market appearances into a sought-after occasion. Carreño’s paintings generate a turnover of over 17.5 million USD and account for 91% of his auction market. However, as paintings make up only for 54% of works sold, the paintings category - albeit rarely sold at auction - is the motor of the artist’s market.
The present work created in 1943 is a prime example of Carreño’s ‘neo-classical’ style from the late 1930s and early 1940s and combines his Cuban artistic heritage with European Baroque nuances and Modern influences from Renoir to Picasso. Actually, the early 40s are Carreño’s best-selling period and the six highest prices paid for a painting by the artist were all for works from 1943: The bold coloring and gigantic figures in lavishly filled compositions, in the same manner as the present work, are the most sought-after creations by the artist.
Context in Time ⏳
Created in 1943 and last exhibited at MoMA in 1944, this work resurfaces as Cuban modernism enjoys a global resurgence. With increased collector interest post-pandemic, the timing is ideal to reintroduce a masterwork of historical and market relevance.
Created in 1943 and last exhibited at MoMA in 1944, this work resurfaces as Cuban modernism enjoys a global resurgence. With increased collector interest post-pandemic, the timing is ideal to reintroduce a masterwork of historical and market relevance.
Conclusion 🎯
Mario Carreño’s “Colonial Patio” offers museum-grade rarity, institutional provenance, and discounted acquisition pricing. Its importance in Cuban art history and outstanding risk/return metrics make it a premier acquisition for collectors and investors alike.
Mario Carreño’s “Colonial Patio” offers museum-grade rarity, institutional provenance, and discounted acquisition pricing. Its importance in Cuban art history and outstanding risk/return metrics make it a premier acquisition for collectors and investors alike.
Expert
Artemundi
Since our foundation in 1989, Artemundi has evolved into an industry-leading art investment company with thousands of successful transactions and over a billion dollars managed in art. Artemundi is the trusted advisor of Spectrum Utilis, S.L.
Additional details
Asset ID
ba2d2f0c-f147-4d98-a44f-3a1a864e2fb6
Name
Colonial Patio
Artist
Mario Carreño
Publication year
1943
Size
103.2 x 78 cm
Number of editions
Unique
Signature
Signed and dated lower left ‘Carreño 43’
Material
Oil on canvas
