Cúneo Perinetti, José (1887–1977)

José Cúneo Perinetti (b. 11 September 1887; d. 19 July 1977), Uruguayan artist. Cúneo Perinetti studied at the Circle of Fine Arts in his native Montevideo; in Turin, Italy, with Leonardo Bistolfi and Anton Mucchi (1907–1909); and in Paris at the Académie Vity with the Spanish painter Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa (1911). Early in his career, he painted naturalist gardens under the belated influence of the Italian Macchiaioli and the contemporary Spanish painter Santiago Rusiñol. Back in Uruguay, he painted landscapes in Treinta Tres Orientales. In 1917 he returned to Paris to study with Kees van Dongen. Upon his return to Uruguay, he began painting geometrical landscapes, including Uruguayan rural huts (ranchos) and Spanish colonial sites in the town of Maldonado, and portraits involving pure, extended areas of color. In the 1930s he started the series of his so-called moon landscapes, for which he is best known (The Moon Over the Ranch, 1934).

Cúneo Perinetti's work from this period is characterized by a low palette, thick pigment, and compositions based on diagonals and dynamic lines. Swirling strokes give the impression of dragging everything—trees, dwellings, earth—into a vortex. These turbulent paintings reveal the influence of Vincent van Gogh and Chaim Soutine. Oversized moons give his expressionistic landscapes a cosmic quality. He won gold medals at the National Salon in Uruguay in 1941, 1942, and 1949. In the late 1940s he turned once more to naturalist landscapes. Despite his long career he had little influence on subsequent Uruguayan artists.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Pedro Argul, El pintor José Cúneo: Paisajista del Uruguay (1949).

Raquel Pereda, José Cúneo: Retrato de un artista (1988).

Additional Bibliography

Cardis-Toulouse, Regine. "Jose Cuneo Perinetti 1887–1977, un peintre uruguayen monographie et catalogue de l'oeuvre." Ph.D. diss., Univeristé de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1998.

                                         Marta Garsd