Loló Soldevilla

LOLÓ SOLDEVILLA"; Dolores Soldevilla Nieto (Pinar del Río, Cuba 1901-Havana, 1971).
"Sailor with a boat", c. 1954.
Mobile sculpture made of metals (bronze, iron and aluminium),
Attached is a certificate issued by Doña Martha Flora Carranza Barba, granddaughter of the artist.
Presents stamp and stamped signature of the artist.
Measurements: 83.3 x 50 x 18 cm.
Loló Soledevilla was the first person in Cuba, and one of the first in Latin America, to introduce sculptures that were completely interactive. In this case the work is presented by the artist as a metallic collage where each of the elements has independent movement, which allows the spectator to interact with the work from a playful perspective, a characteristic that was frequent in Soldevilla's sculptural work, who was interested in the spectators of her work being able to access her pieces in a personal way, thus intervening in the creative process. In this particular case, the author starts from figuration, creating a boat through the use of forged and assembled metals, thus extolling the values of the craft tradition and its culture.
Her artistic career has always been marked by experimentation, not only stylistically but also technically, and she produced 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 academic year 1960-61 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 preserved 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).