Pedro de Oraá is a Cuban contemporary visual artist. He is best known for his contributions to the Cuban abstract movement of Concretism in the 1950s and his involvement in the group Los Once in 1956 and the co-founding of Los Diez Pintores Concretos known simply as, Los Diez with fellow artists Loló Soldevilla and Sandú Daríe, in 1957. He is an art critic, poet, designer, translator and the beneficiary of many awards such as the Distinction for National Culture in 1995, the National Book Design Prize in 2011 and the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 2015.
Biography
Pedro de Oraá was born in Havana, Cuba in 1931 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts San Alejandro. He is a painter, editor, poet, writer and art critic, best known for his co-founding of Los Diez Pintores Concretos, a group of artists working in geometric abstraction in 1950s Cuba. Oraá and Loló Soldevilla, another abstract artist, his contemporary and wife, opened Galeria Color-Luz in 1957 Havana, which became the rendezvous point for Los Diez as well as, the place where they held a majority of their exhibitions. Los Diez were the pioneers for the Concrete movement or Concrete Abstraction, a style that defines itself as simply geometrical and without "...representational or drawn-from-life references... a style without narrative or natural connections..." Even after the groups' dissolution in 1961, Oraá represented Cuba in many exhibitions both on the island and abroad and was a significant member in many cultural organizations such as The National Union of Writers and Artists and The National Council of Culture. With a career spanning more than 70 years, Pedro de Oraá is the last living member of Los Diez.
History
"In Cuba, the entrance of abstraction implied-for the very first time-the synchronization with international isms and a revolution itself within the Cuban art history." The development of this obscure branch of modernism went hand in hand with the political transitions of the times and the tumultuous years that led up to Fidel Castro's rise to power. This process of transition shaped the groups' philosophy and focused their concern on "...deepening the art experience, an affirming response with respect tonational identity and art..." However, the public and acclaimed art critics saw the work as ridiculous and foreign due to its assimilation of art movements from Latin America, Europe and its disregard for classic, academically taught, realistic techniques from the Vanguardists tradition. Although Los Diez exhibited as a group only three times, they comprised a significant period in Cuban political, social and artistic history in only three years. From the fall of Batista's regime to the Cuban Revolution and the rise of a very nationalistic sentiment, Concretism was all but omitted from Cuban art history until today with Pedro de Oraá's win of a National Prize for Visual Arts. "It seems to me that Pedro de Oraá has always been there, reminding us through his work that a great piece is one that remains firmly on its path, indifferent to the ever-changing winds of fashion that blow." Today, Concretism is being acknowledged as an important period of art history after decades of being forgotten.
