Biography

Sandu Darie (also referred to as Sandú Darié Laver) was Born in 1908 in Romania and is known for Neo-Constructivism and Kinetic Art. Sandu Darie grew up in France and was trained initially as a lawyer, and moved to Havana in 1941, taking Cuban nationality. An abstract painter since 1946, he belonged to the South American Neo-Constructivist movement. In his compositions the triangle predominated in combination with vertical and horizontal lines. He also used interchangeable mobile panels. He had contacts with the Romanian avant-garde (in particular, the poet Stephan Roll and his wife, the painter Medi W. Dinu) and eventually took up painting. After his time in Paris, in 1941 he settled in Havana, where he would also die. In 1946, he joins the Latin-American geometric abstract art group Madí. Later he was a member of the Diez Pintores Concretos group. His works evince the basic tenets of Concrete art, a combination of planes, primary colors and form fused with geometric rigor stimulated by Piet Mondrian's Neoplasticism. His most innovative works include irregular-shaped canvases and structures with moving parts, connoting the principles of the Latin American MADÍ movement that wished to break from traditional painting and focus on the concrete and physical reality of art. Daríe was constantly preoccupied with space, light and color as well as with viewer participation in the motion, perspective and movement of his works. Sandu Darie died September 2nd, 1991 in Havana, Cuba.