Pedro de Oraá Carratalá

Poet, narrator, essayist, critic of visual arts and painter. 2015 Visual Arts Prize.

Born in La Habana. He completed his early studies at the Superior Primary School attached to the Normal School for Teachers of La Habana.

He studied Painting and Sculpture at the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts and Civil Construction at the School of Arts and Crafts of La Habana.

In 1949, he published for the first time together with other poets in Caibarién, Las Villas, later traveled to Venezuela in 1957 and there became involved with groups of writers and artists. Starting in 1958 he was part of the group of Ten Concrete Painters.

He organized the scenic activities of the National Theater in 1960, and worked as head of advertising design until 1962. That same year he began working as a designer at the National Council of Culture.

He founded Pálpite Editions in 1961 and is co-founder of Belic Publishing House in 1964. At that same time, he moved to Bulgaria, where he lived for two years with the goal of learning the Bulgarian language and literature.

Among the main personal exhibitions held since 1957, those at Pequeño Espacio Gallery, National Council of Visual Arts, Raúl Martínez Gallery, Cuban Book Institute, Fayad Jamís Gallery, Center for Art and Literature, Alamar, in La Habana stand out, as well as group exhibitions at the Center for Fine Arts, Caguas, Puerto Rico and at the Grand Arch of Defense, París, France.

His works are found in the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Cuba, University Museum of El Chopo, Federal District, Mexico, Godwin-Ternbach Museum of Queen College, Nueva York, Museum of Finest Cuban Arts, Viena.

He collaborated in La Gaceta de Cuba, Casa de las Américas, Unión, Orígenes, Ciclón, El Mundo, Revolución, Lunes de Revolución, Noticias de Hoy supplement of the newspaper Hoy Domingo, Pájaro Cascabel of México, RDA of German Democratic Republic, Inostrannaia Gazeta of Soviet Union; Plamak, Bulgaria Today, Literary Front, National Culture of Bulgaria.

He is one of the translators of the anthology Bulgarian Poetry and also performed poetry translations for the journal Unión. He worked on translations of Gueo Milef and Tristo Smirnenski for the Foreign Languages Publishing House of Sofia, as well as on versions of the work of Vesna Parum, Yugoslav poetess.

Published Works
The Sifted Instant, 1953
Station of the Grass, 1957, 1989
Destruction of the Horizon, 1968
Time and Poetry
The Voice of the Earth
The Destructions Across the Horizon, 1966-1967
Notes for a Mythology of La Habana, 1971
Sum of Echoes, 1989
Threshold, 1997
The personal anthology Cipher, 2003
Secret Life of La Giraldilla, 2003
His poems were translated into English, French, German, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian and Swedish.