Portocarrero began his artistic education at the San Alejandro academy, but left early and is hence considered 'self taught'.

[1] He put on his first exhibition in 1934, at the Havana Lyceum, beginning a long and fruitful career which included a 1937 collaboration with Mariano Rodríguez and work as a 'free studies' teacher of painting and sculpture.

[2] After travels in Haiti, Europe and the United States he gave his first show to an overseas audience at Julien Levy's gallery in New York City in 1945.

[3] In 1950, he worked with Wifredo Lam, Mariano, Martinez Pedro and Amelia Peláez in the village of Santiago de las Vegas.

[6] As well as a painter and sculptor, Portocarrero worked as a ceramicist, scenic designer and book illustrator, publishing his own Las Máscaras (The Masks) in 1935 and El Sueño (The Dream) in 1939.