Watercolor on wove paper, 1969. 458x605 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right recto.
Provenance: Private collection, Chicago.
Darie (1908-1991) was born in Romania to Jewish parents and initially studied in Bucharest to become a lawyer. During the 1930s, with the political turmoil and religious persecution of World War II in Eastern Europe, Darie moved to Paris and became enmeshed with the avant-garde artistic circle that included many other Romanian emigrés such as Constantin Brâncusi, Tristan Tzara and Victor Brauner. With the ever-increasing threat brought on by the war and his vulnerability as both an immigrant and a Jew, Darie made the decision to move again, this time to Cuba, and arrived in Havana in 1941. There he became one of the leading artists at the center of the Cuban abstract art movement of the mid-1900s. His style during the 1950s and 1960s reveals the influence of the prevalent New York school of Abstract Expressionism and their gestural painting, which he developed during the 1970s and later in his career to a more hard-edged geometric abstract style. Darie exhibited in New York with both the Carlebach Gallery and Rose Fried Gallery and represented Cuba at the 1953 II São Paulo Bienal.
