Canasta

Mexican Canasta set with painting by Ramón Espino Barros

The backs of this double boxed set for Canasta feature a still life painting by the distinguished Mexican artist Ramón Espino Barros (1918-2000). The cards were printed by Clemente Jacques y Cia., S.A., Mexico in c.1950.

As a young boy Espino Barros loved festivities and dreamed of becoming a bullfighter, but he settled for the safer option of painting. He studied with Carlos Ruano Llopis, a Spanish bull-fight artist who had emigrated to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War. He greatly admired Velázquez, Goya and El Greco and defined his own artistic work as ‘realistic impressionism’. During an interview he explained: “pintar, para mí, es una necesidad de tipo biológico ya que si no lo hago, si no pinto, me siento intensamente frustrado, desgraciado e inútil. Así, cuando pinto, por el contrario, siento que existo en armonía conmigo mismo y con el resto de la creación. Si dejo de pintar me asfixio como pez sacado del agua.”

Right: painting by Ramón Espino Barros (1918-2000) on the reverse of a double Canasta set printed by Clemente Jacques y Cia., S.A., Mexico, c.1950 →

Below: the Ace of Spades has the monogram 'CJ' with a small cockerel's head above. Similar cards of the standard Anglo-American type were subsequently published as 'Naipes Cassino' by Pasatiempos Gallo S.A.

Above: double Canasta set with painting by Ramón Espino Barros (born in Jalapa, Veracruz, 1918) on the reverse. Espino Barros is known as a painter of bullfight scenes and Mexican themed paintings. He died in 2000.