Mario Juan Carreño y Morales (Havana, 1913 - Santiago, 1999) was a Cuban-Chilean painter who received Chile's National Art Prize in 1982. He had obtained Chilean citizenship in 1969. His career spanned much of the twentieth century, moving between Cuba, Europe, the United States and Chile.
He studied at the San Alejandro Academy in Havana and later trained in Madrid and Paris. After a period in New York during the Second World War, he settled permanently in Chile in 1958. There he promoted art teaching, co-founded with Nemesio Antúnez the art school of the Catholic University, and worked as a professor and deputy director.
His painting moved from monumental figuration in the 1930s to a surrealist phase and, in the 1950s, to an abstract style of strict formal rigour. After a brief informalist episode in 1963, he returned to figuration with apocalyptic images of atomic war. From 1970 the landscape of northern Chile became a constant in his work, alongside female figures facing the sea. His painting kept the exuberance and sensuality of his Caribbean origins.
His awards included the Guggenheim International Prize in 1956 and Cuba's National Painting Prize in 1954. He stopped painting in 1994 after several cerebral infarctions. His work is held in museums and collections in the United States, Latin America and Europe, and the Mario Carreño Foundation, created in 2013, works to promote and safeguard it.