Loló Soldevilla


Loló Soldevilla was a Cuban visual artist primarily known for her role in concrete art.

Biography

Born Dolores Soldevilla Nieto in 1901, Havana, Cuba, she was an avid painter, sculptor, collage artist and draughtsman. She began painting in 1948, and in 1949 traveled to Paris as Cuba's cultural attache, something which allowed her to travel extensively throughout Europe and Latin America, influencing her art style and career immensely. In Paris, she was influenced by the European avant-garde, most notably abstraction. In 1956, Soldevilla along with her husband and fellow artist Pedro de Oraá, returned to Cuba and founded Galeria Color-Luz, an artistic space solely focused on the promotion of abstract art. Oraá and Loló, along with Romanian-born artist Sandu Darie among others, were the pioneers of Concretism or Cuban Abstraction in 1950s Cuba, as well as the founders of the group Los Diez Pintores Concretos or known simply as Los Diez.
Soldevilla graduated from the Falcón Conservatory for singing and the violin, founding the short-lived group La Orchestra de Loló before taking up painting in 1948. During the 1930s, she was a seminal political activist, enduring detainment for participation in several political rallies, as well as imprisonment in the Prison for Women in Guanabacoa, in 1935 for her positions against the Machado dictatorship. She also helped found the Partido Aprista of Cuba, along with Enrique de la Osa and Guillermo de Zéndegui among others and integrated the Executive National Committee for this political organization. In 1949, she traveled to Paris as a cultural attaché for the Cuban Embassy and enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she started to develop works that would later on that year, encompass her first two shows. Among her returns to Cuba, Soldevilla traveled extensively during her career, she was influenced by the avant-garde of several countries in Europe and Latin America including Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Austria, Germany, Venezuela, and Brazil among others. In 1951, she joined the artist workshop Atelier d’Art Abstrait founded by Deswane and Pillet, with whom she collaborated with for two years; she also attended a course on engraving techniques with Hayter and Cochet.
Soldevilla traveled back and forth from the island exhibiting her works and garnering a group of contemporaries who would soon help her expand the influence of concrete abstraction in Cuba. In 1957, after a stint in Venezuela Soldevilla returned to Cuba with her husband and fellow artist Pedro de Oraá and together founded Galeria Color-Luz, gallery focused on Concrete Abstraction and the Ten Concrete Painters. Although Los Diez and Color-Luz were short-lived, lasting only from 1957-1961, Soldevilla kept painting and collaborated with several magazines and newspapers such as Revolución. From the revolution in 1959 to the early sixties, she became the professor of Fine Arts in the School of Architecture at the University of Havana. In 1964, she founded the group of painters Espacio, and became a member of UPEC, a journalist union and the group UNEAC the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. Loló Soldevilla died in 1971.

History

Los Diez Pintores Concretos were..." a group that established the style of ‘Concretism’ or ‘Concrete’ art in 1950s Cuba and fashioned a whole new, unique language of abstraction." Soldevilla's take on geometric abstraction played an important role in the development of concretismo in Cuba as well as in the international scene.
Soldevilla's education in Paris and the bonds she formed between her teachers, students and fellow contemporaries led to her producing her most important body of work in the years between 1950-1957. Her collage work from this period is a study of the geometries of circles, rectangles, lines and colors, creating a rhythm with their variation of size and shape. Diagonals, opposing elements, contrasting colors and organic geometric style set Loló apart from her fellow contemporaries, as did her asymmetric metal kinetic sculptures.
The main philosophy of concrete art is that it is an extremely introverted art form, it has no narrative, no basis or reference in the natural world and has no defining qualities except the simple admiration of its colors and shapes. Soldevilla was a principal advocate of this style and movement. Just as Soldevilla's opening of Galeria Color-Luz incubated Los Diez, its closing in 1961 marked the official dissolution of the group after exhibiting together only three times. The last decade of her life would be spent in journalistic and literary pursuits, she worked with several magazines and newspapers and even wrote a memoir about her life in Paris entitled, Ir, venir, volver a ir: crónicas . An avid writer she wrote novels, plays and even a ballet. Although she exhibited little in the 1960s, she remains a seminal, revolutionary figure in the history of Cuban art and the flowering of concretism and concrete art.

Exhibitions

2018
2016
2015
2006
1970
1966
1957–1961
1957
1956
1955
1954
1953
1952
1951
1950
1949