Luis Martínez Pedro

Martínez Pedro, after finishing his high school studies, studies architecture for two years at the University of La Habana, then enrolls in the San Alejandro School which he attends for only two days. Due to his revolutionary activities and the growing repression of the Machado tyranny, he decides to travel to the United States in 1930. He settles in Orleans and tries to continue his architecture studies at Tulane University.

In 1931 he exhibited a series of watercolors at the Tampa Fair which won him awards; by 1932 he had joined the Arts Crafts Club of New Orleans. He returns to Cuba in 1933 and works at the advertising company Mestre y Compañía starting in 1935. He exhibits 12 drawings of social character at the Modern Art Salon at the Centro de Dependientes of La Habana in 1937, and at the Art exhibition in Cuba, organized by the University of La Habana in 1940.

From then on he becomes involved with the national artistic movement. However, the relationships he establishes with Amelia Peláez, René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez and other important visual artists of the time do not lead him to pursue regular studies in the plastic arts.

In 1943 he presents his first solo exhibition at the Lyceum Lawn Tennis Club, where he shows works from the series The Love of Animals, in addition to other drawings on bullfighting and mythological themes. He publishes vignettes, drawings and covers in the magazine Origenes and presides over the Association of Painters and Sculptors of Cuba (APEC), officially created in December 1948. That same year he founds the Latin American Technical Advertising Organization (OTPLA). Years later he is recognized for his work as a renovator of Cuban advertising. In the field of painting he works on the theme Characters from Cuarto Fambá. He begins to paint regularly around 1951. He travels throughout South America and meets the Argentine concrete art group Madi. From this point on he becomes closely linked with this artistic movement, carries out the first concrete exhibition together with Sandu Darie at the University of La Habana, and becomes part of the group 10 Concrete Painters.

During these years he initiates the theme of the sea in his painting with series such as Territorial Waters, The Signs of the Sea. His eternal love for nature and its diverse elements inspire other works among which stand out those created for the Cuban Flora series starting in 1973. In 1981 he is decorated with the Félix Varela Order, the highest cultural distinction awarded by the State Council of the Republic of Cuba.