KEY WEST -- Mario Sanchez's detailed carvings brought to life the Key West of the early 1900s, when the Monkey Man roamed the streets with a barrel organ and kids traded bottles for balloons from the island's original recycler.

Sanchez, considered by art historians as the most important Cuban-American folk artist of the 20th century, would have been 100 this week.

In commemoration, 70 of his rarely seen painted wood carvings were brought to his hometown for an exhibit, which opens Friday at the Key West Museum of Art & History at the Custom House.

Sanchez's heart-warming folk art, made under a tree in his backyard studio with dime-store paint brushes, discarded cigar factory wood and even kitty litter, are a slice of Key West history, preserved with humor.

One piece shows men fighting cocks on a Key West street.

''They are so engrossed in their fight that they don't see the Keystone Cops right away,'' said guest curator Nance Frank.

`GOSSIPING'

Another shows a favorite Key West pastime.

''The women are gossiping. The chickens are gossiping. The children stealing fruit in the tree are gossiping,'' Frank said.

Sanchez often said: ``I know my modest art isn't any good, but it pleases others.''

Frank, an old friend of Sanchez's, said: ``Time has told that it is great art.''

His carvings have sold for as little as $1.50 and as much as $50,000 and been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Actor Cary Grant commissioned a series of Sanchez carvings that lined the staircase Marilyn Monroe walked down in the 1962 film That Touch of Mink.

SELF-TAUGHT

Sanchez began whittling as a boy and sold his first carvings, of fish, when he was in his 20s. Later, his mother-in-law suggested he try street scenes.

The self-taught artist's work became more sophisticated over the years, with the addition of whimsical clouds that hover over the meticulously accurate depictions of Key West's buildings and everyday people.

''He never invented scenes or characters,'' said Claudia Pennington, executive director of the Key West museum.

The Monkey Man was a real organ grinder, who came from Italy with the circus and never left. The first recycler existed, too.

The carvings in the exhibit span his career from the 1930s to 1990s, from Key West to Tampa's Cuban community of Ybor City.

Sanchez was among many Key Westers who moved to Tampa with the cigar industry during the Depression.

BELOVED `MARIOS'

Many buildings in his carvings are familiar to those who live in the Southernmost City. But with 90 percent of the museum's visitors coming from outside the island, Pennington provides historical or current-day pictures with the exhibit.

'A person might know: `That's the Green Parrot, I had a drink there.' But 70 years ago, it was a grocery store,'' Pennington said.

To put the exhibit together, Frank asked and sometimes begged private collectors to let her borrow their carvings.

Some collectors in their 90s were afraid they would never see their beloved ''Marios'' again. But wanting to share the uplifting art and honor the man who lovingly created it, collectors from Gibraltar, New York, and just down the street sent their carvings to the museum.

`I ... MISS MY MARIO'

''I already miss my Mario,'' Nelida Cobo said this week of the carving that depicts her father-in-law's white house. It hung on her living-room wall in Key West for 50 years.

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