Quickly after returning to Cuba from studying at the Arts and Craft Club in New Orleans, Luis Martínez Pedro participated in commercial illustration and poster-making while working for advertising companies inclusive to Origins magazine. Amid of the 1940s, Luis Martínez’s work evolved from expressionist subjectivity to flawless, geometric abstraction — a significant impetus towards social progressivism and modernity in Cuba during the twentieth century. Together with a constellation of advanced Cuban artists, Mario Carreño and Martínez Pedro, both who are representatives of generation vanguardia received international acknowledgment when their work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944.

In 1953, Martínez Pedro won an award at the II São Paulo Biennial for his Espacio azul (Blue Space) painting granted by UNESCO as “the most outstanding example of abstract art”1 Luis Martínez Pedro became one of the first members and co-founder of Los Diez Pintores Concretos between 1958 and 1961, a group of artists responsible for the revolutionized, self-styled concrete art movement of the twentieth century. Established in Havana, the group included various concrete artists such as Mario Carreño and Loló Soldevilla whose artworks were exhibited at Galería de Arte Color-Luz in 1959, the second year anniversary of the gallery. Los Diez were together and exhibited three more times before the gallery closed its doors in 1961. In 2015, David Zwirner opened a museum quality exhibition in London titled Concrete Cuba; a survey of los diez concretos where Luis Martínez Pedro’s untitled was exhibited.