top of page

 Lolo Soldevilla 

Loló Soldevilla was born in Pinar del Rio Cuba in 1901, after a brief involvement in politics in Havana during the 1940's Lolo went to study sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1949-1950), while there, she acquainted with members of the Venezuelan group Los Disidentes, specially Alejandro Otero. Returned to Cuba in 1950, later participating in two solo exhibits with sculptures and paintings at the Lyceum and the National University. Returned to Paris in 1951 as the Cultural Attaché at the Cuban Embassy, meeting with Wifredo Lam and spending time at the workshops of Jean Dewasne and Charles Pillet by invitation of fellow Cuban artist Wifredo Arcay, exhibiting later at the Salon des Realités Nouvelles in 1955. In 1956, Soldevilla returned permanently to Cuba. In 1957, she presented solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana) and at the Centro Profesional del Este in Caracas. That same year, Soldevilla founded with then husband Pedro de Oraá, the Galería de Arte Color-Luz in Havana, organizing the first exhibits of Concrete art in Cuba and co-founding the group Diez Pintores Concretos, active from 1958 until the closing of the gallery in 1961. In the 1960s, after embracing the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Soldevilla’s creative activity decreased remarkably, as she turned to promoting culture through teaching at the School of Architecture(1960-1961), designing toys (1962), and working as an editor for the newspaper Granma (1965-1971). In 1965, she founded the group Espacio along with a group of young Cuban painters, the group dissolved in 1972, after Soldevilla’s death in 1971.

bottom of page