Sandu Darie

Biography

Sandu Darie (also referred to as Sandú Darié Laver) was a Romanian artist. Trained initially as a lawyer, 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 spending a while in Paris, in 1941 he settled in Havana, where he would also die.

Career

Darie advocated for the use of non-representational, geometric abstraction in Latin America and developed ties with like-minded South American concrete artists like Slovakian-Argentine Gyula Kosice. Darie’s combination of primary colors, geometric shapes, and vertical and horizontal lines demonstrate the influence of Piet Mondrian’s Neoplasticism on his practice, while his kinetic sculptures invite viewers to interact with them, crafting their own geometries. In 1946, he joins the Latin-American geometric abstract art group MADI. Later he was a member of Los Diez Pintores Concretos group.