While he had a number of exhibitions in Mexico during his life including a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1965, he did not have the kind of success that many of his contemporaries did as he did not follow the then dominant themes or styles of Mexican muralism movement.
[1][2] His father was from an intellectual and socially influential family from Cantabria, Spain, related to politician Matilde de la Torre and María Blanchard .
[1] In 1923, he was a cofounder of the Stridentism movement in Mexico, along with Manuel Maples Arce, Germán List Arzubide, Salvador Gallardo, Silvestre Revueltas, Jean Charlot, Edward Weston and Tina Modotti.
These included Julio González, Otto van Rees (artist), Angelina Beloff, Adam Fischer, Joaquín Torres García, Jacques Lipchitz and Constantin Brâncuși.
[2][5][6] He became a member of the Cercle et Carré where he became associated with Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, Wassily Kandinsky and Georges Vantongerloo.
After the death of María Blanchard in 1932, he decided to return to Mexico with his family, inviting Angelina Beloff, Diego Rivera's abandoned first wife, to accompany them.
[2] In Mexico, he identified politically and socially with the dominant Mexican school of painting, but his aesthetics were more European due to his stay in Paris.
Mireya Cueto (born 1922) became a well-known puppeteer, writer and playwright, winning the Bellas Artes Medal for her life's work.
In 1924 he had an exhibition of these masks at the “El Café de Nadie” affiliated with the Stridentism movement, most based on friends including one dedicated to Leopoldo Méndez .
[13] Most of his work would not be appreciated until late in his career and after his death, as a pioneer of abstract and modern art in Mexico and Latin America.
[5][7] Other exhibitions of his work after his death include the Futurismo & futurism exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1986),[12] Centro Cultural Santo Domingo in Oaxaca (2000), the Federico Silva Museum in San Luis Potosí (2005), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2005),[9] the Carrillo Gil Museum in Mexico City (2006)[14] and the Museo de Arte in Querétaro (2007).
[6] On permanent display at the Museo de Arte Moderno is the sculpture Tehuana, which consists of sheet metal about 110 cm high.
[6] One major monumental work is an iron piece painted in enamel, for the Gustavsberg porcelain plant in Sweden sponsored by the Swedish-Mexican Society in 1954.
After he returned to Mexico from Europe, Carlos Chávez employed him to develop characters for an educational puppet theatre.
[6] Cueto created oils, watercolors, glass, ceramics, enamels, collages, murals, ink drawings, sculpture and even some literature.
[4][5][14] Examples include concrete, electrical cable and wire pieces such as Estela II, Máscara (1948) and El Nahual.