Pedro de Oraá (1931-2020) - Zonder titel

Beautiful small expressive work by Cuban artist Pedro de Oraá. It is an oil on canvas measuring 22 x 30 cm. Very nicely framed. The painting is signed and dated in the lower right corner.

Provenance: Sarracino Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, USA 2017

Pedro de Oraá

Pedro de Oraá (born in Havana, Cuba, 1931) studied at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts. In the fifties, while he was engaged with abstraction, he published El Instante Cernido (Immediate Seven, 1952-1953), his first poetry collection.

After meeting Lollo Soldevilla (1901-1971), they traveled to Venezuela for his first solo exhibition at Galería-Librería Sardio in Caracas (1957). In the same year the couple founded Galería de Arte Color-Luz in Havana, which became a meeting place for Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters), a group of artists working with geometric abstraction (1958-1961).

De Oraá became the group’s archivist and documented the local Cuban art scene. He represented Cuba at various exhibitions abroad and from 1961 played a key role in national cultural organizations, including the Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba and the Consejo Nacional de Cultura. From 1964 he traveled through Eastern Europe and maintained contacts with independent artists from the countries in that region. Oraá is known as one of the leading Cuban artists with an experimental and abstract style in the 1960s and 1970s. He received the National Designers Prize from the Cuban Institute of the Book (2011) and the Cuban National Prize for Visual Arts (2015).

The early work of Pedro de Oraá seems characterized by biomorphic abstraction, in which flowing forms come together in the vast space of the image. Gradually these organic entities evolve, grow in size and structure, cover the canvas and the relationship between them becomes increasingly intimate. In his more recent paintings, Oraá limits the color palette to nearly monochrome tones. The artist concentrates on black and white and explores the different nuances of each color in a kaleidoscopic vision, in which the geometric structure is as if blown up. This futuristic feature is directly linked to the artist’s interest in dynamism, evolution and speed.