LOLÓ SOLDEVILLA (Pinar del Río, Cuba 1901-Havana, 1971).
Untitled, 1956.
Collage with coloured paper on cardboard.
Enclosed certificate issued by Doña Martha Flora Carranza.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 26,7 x 64,5 cm;37 x 74 cm (frame).
This work encloses a certificate issued by Doña Martha Flora Carranza, Universal heiress of Loló Soldevilla's work. In this work we can appreciate the influence of Geometric Abstraction and Kineticism, typical of the European avant-garde, treated from a perspective where the elements, close to abstraction, are arranged through a stable and mobile character. Made with cubes and circles, the author achieves great movement, balance and harmony, heir to the avant-garde movements, but still representative of a personal style such as that of Dolores Soldevilla, who knew how to reinterpret everything with which she had artistic contact during her training and create a decisive language far removed from the exotic and post-colonialist ideas that the West had of Latin America.
Loló Soldevilla is considered one of the most important figures of Geometric Abstraction and Kineticism, both for her achievements during her career and for her efforts to promote Cuban art inside and outside the borders of her country. He always showed a political involvement through his art, both in his country and abroad, taking an active part in the aid campaigns for the Spanish Republic after the outbreak of the Civil War, and his artistic career always stood out for his experimentation, not only stylistically but also technically, producing works in different media such as sculpture, engraving and drawing. His artistic career began in 1948, influenced by his friendship with Wifredo Lam, who encouraged and supported him in his beginnings in the world of painting. In 1949 he settled in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Grande Chaumière, making frequent trips and exhibitions in Cuba to show his work. In 1951 she joined the workshop of Dewasne and Pillet, where she stayed for two years, and attended a course on printmaking techniques by Hayter and Cochet, maintaining and encouraging creative exchanges with the School of Paris. Linked to the 26th of July Movement, she was forced to live a clandestine life, since during the pre-revolutionary period she collaborated in Diario de la Marina, Carteles, Información, El País, Avance, Porvenir, Tiempo en Cuba and Survey, as well as in the Parisian publications Combat and Arts. After the revolutionary triumph of 1959 she joined the newspaper Revolución as an editor, and during the 1960-61 academic year she established herself as a professor of plastic arts at the School of Architecture of the University of Havana. From then on, Dolores Soldevilla combined her artistic career with her teaching work at the University's School of Architecture and at the newspaper Granma. Thanks to her aesthetic approaches, the Grupo Espacio emerged and she was a member of the group Diez Pintores Concretos; she was a member of the UPEC and the UNEAC and collaborated with Bohemia. During his lifetime his work was exhibited in important artistic spaces such as the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Cuba, in Caracas (Venezuela), Paris, in Valencia, Valladolid (Spain), Czechoslovakia, etc., achieving great recognition of his work at a global level. Today his work is kept in numerous private collections all over the world and in institutions such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba (where the main collection is kept).