Sandú Darié Laver

He was born in Romania but became a naturalized Cuban citizen from the mid-1940s. He was born in Roman, Romania. Considered a precursor of abstractionism in both its lyrical and geometric aspects, his works also characterize him as one of the foremost representatives of kinetic art in Cuba.

Of self-taught training, he lived in his native country until he moved to France in 1926 to pursue studies; six years later he graduated with a degree in Law. During that time he traveled constantly to Romania, where he published humorous drawings in progressive magazines and newspapers such as Adan and Cuvantul Liber.

In France he created antifascist humorous works. In 1940 he enlisted as a volunteer in the French army. A year later he arrived in Cuba, where he continued making humorous drawings until he began painting in 1942. Around 1947 he adopted Cuban citizenship.

He presented his first solo exhibition at the Lyceum of Havana, Compositions 1949, with works of non-objective abstract lyricism. That same year he presented his work at the Carlebach Gallery in New York. At that time he began his correspondence with Gyula Kosice, founder of the Argentine group "Arte Madí", through whose intermediation he frequently participated in exhibitions by that group and published articles for its homonymous magazine.

In 1950 he exhibited at the Lyceum of Havana his Pictorial Structures, with which he presented his "speculations on abstractions of the form-picture in space-time". He was co-founder and co-editor, together with Luis Martínez Pedro and Mario Carreño, of the Cuban magazine Noticias de arte. He exhibited his transformable structures for the first time in August 1955 at the First Concrete Exhibition, organized by the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Havana. He was part of the group Ten Concrete Cuban Painters (1959-61).

In 1964 he created, jointly with filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet, the documentary Cosmorama. Spatial Poem no 1, an experimental study of forms and structures in movement -with lights and colors that form developing plastic images-, currently considered by many specialists as the genesis of Cuban video art. Other contributions of his to the audiovisual field, made in conjunction with the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) in the 1960s were El bosque bajo el puente, El vuelo cósmico, El gran viaje, La cocotología and Caminos del saber.

His Cosmorama. Electro-painting in Motion was exhibited, for the first time, at the National Museum of Fine Arts (Cuba), in August 1966, summarizing the sum of his experiences in the field of kinetics. For these, critic Frank Popper, in the work Naissance de l´art cinetique. L´image du movement dans les arts plastiques depuir 1860, evaluated him, along with Yaacov Agam, Nicholas Shoffer and Víctor Vasarely, as one of the initiators of the so-called "luminous art of the environment".

During the 1970s he developed a line aimed at realizing projects for architectural and urban environments, in which he employed kinetic art as a language of expression. His work in this regard was prolific: The Red Tree (1981), an environmental sculpture of the Ernesto Guevara pioneers palace –in Lenin Park of Havana-; the murals Day and Night (1982), installed in the vestibule of Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital; the murals Undulating Colors in Space, for the exteriors of the Wajay towel factory, Havana (1983), and the sculpture The Column of Life, for the Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology (1986), all in the Cuban capital.

In 1987 he inaugurated at the Provincial Center of Plastic Arts and Design the solo exhibition Sandú Darié. The following year and in honor of his eightieth birthday, the National Museum organized an anthology of his work. In 1989 he took on one of his last artistic projects: the design of Old Square in the city of Havana, on the occasion of the closing of the FIART'89 event.

His work has been included in two important international exhibitions organized in recent years by the National Museum Reina Sofía Art Center (MNCARS) of Madrid: Arte Madí (1997) and Lo(s) cinético(s) (2007).

In 1981 he was decorated with the Distinction for National Culture awarded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Cuba.

Solo Exhibitions
1966 Kinetic Painting by Sandú Darié. Cosmorama. Electro Painting in Motion. National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba.
1971 Sandú Darié. Selection of 12 of his works since 1944. National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba.
1984 Kinetic Art Spectacular "Images in Motion with Batá Rhythms" (collateral to the 1st. Havana Biennial). Cuba Pavilion, Havana
1988 Sandú Darié. Anthological Exhibition 1945 1988. National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, CUBA.

Group Exhibitions
1951 "Some areas of research from 1913 to 1951". Rose Fried Gallery, New York, USA.
1952 XXVI Biennale di Venezia. Venice, Italy
1953, 1955 and 1957 II, III and IV Biennial of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo. Ibirapuera Park, BRAZIL.
1972 Meeting of Latin American Plastic Arts. Latin American Gallery, House of the Americas, Havana, Cuba
2000 "Tone to Tone". Abstract Art Exhibition. Hall of Solidarity, Hotel Habana Libre Tryp, Havana, CUBA.

Awards
Among the main awards he has received are:
1956 Honorable Mention. VIII National Salon of Painting and Sculpture. National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba.
1975 Honorary Member. Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague, Holland.

Works in Collections
His work is displayed in the collections of:
At the House of the Americas, Havana, Cuba.
At the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba.
At the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.