Amelia Peláez del Casal (January 5, 1896 – April 8, 1968) was an important

Cuban Cuban or Cubans may refer to: Related to Cuba * of or related to Cuba, a country in the Caribbean * Cubans, people from Cuba, or of Cuban descent ** Cuban exile, a person who left Cuba for political reasons, or a descendant thereof * Cuban Americ ...

painter of the

Avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

generation.

Biography

Amelia Peláez (born-1896)

Yaguajay, Cuba Yaguajay () is a municipality and town in the Sancti Spíritus Province of Cuba. It is located in the northern part of the province, and borders the Bay of Buena Vista to the north. The Caguanes National Park (protecting swamp and coastal ecosyst ...

, in the former Cuban province of

Las Villas Las Villas is a natural region and ''comarca'' in Andalusia, southern Spain. It is located in the mountainous area at the eastern end of Jaén Province. The main town is Villacarrillo. Together with the Sierra de Cazorla and Sierra de Segura ...

(now

Sancti Spíritus Province Sancti Spíritus () is one of the provinces of Cuba. Its capital is the identically named Sancti Spíritus. Another major city is Trinidad. Geography The southern coast of the province is flat, but the western portion of Sancti Spíritus provin ...

). She was the fifth born of eleven siblings in a family that was part of the Cuban-Creole middle class. Her father was a doctor, Manuel Pelaez y Laredo, and her mother, Maria del Carmen del Casal y Lastra, stayed at home with her children. Amelia's uncle was

Julian del Casal Julian may refer to: People * Julian (emperor) (331–363), Roman emperor from 361 to 363 * Julian, of the Roman gens Julia, with imperial dynasty offshoots * Saint Julian (disambiguation), several Christian saints * Julian (given name), people w ...

, who was a poet and included her family in Cuba's intellectual circles. In 1917, her family moved to

Havana Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.La Víbora district, and this gave her the opportunity to enter the

Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes "San Alejandro" Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, is the oldest and most prestigious fine arts school in Cuba. It is also known as Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes "San Alejandro", Academia San Alejandro, or San Alejandro Academy. The school is lo ...

at the rather late age of 20 years (students at this

academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

usually start at 12–13 years of age). She was among Leopoldo Romañach's favorite students. In 1924 she graduated from San Alejandro, and exhibited her paintings for the first time, along with another Cuban female painter, María Pepa Lamarque, at the Association of Painters and Sculptors in Havana. Receiving a small government grant, she travelled to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in the summer of 1924 and began six months of study at the

Art Students' League The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study fu ...

. In 1927, after being awarded a larger grant, she began studying in France, while paying short visits to

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

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, and other countries.

Student life in Paris

Pelaez moved to Paris, accompanied by Cuban writer

Lydia Cabrera Lydia Cabrera (May 20, 1899, in Havana, Cuba – September 19, 1991, in Miami, Florida) was a Cuban independent ethnographer, writer, and literary activist. She was an authority on Santería and other Afro-Cuban religions. During her lifetime she ...

, after she received a grant from the government in order to pursue art. Both took painting and art history courses at

École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in nor ...

. She also took drawing and art history courses at the

Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière () is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the A ...

and the

École du Louvre The École du Louvre () is a selective institution of higher education and prestigious ''grande école'' located in the Aile de Flore of the Louvre Palace in Paris, France. It is dedicated to the study of archaeology, art history, anthropology ...

. In 1931 Pelaez enrolled, along with Cabrera, in

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...

's Academie Contemporaine. She then began studying with Russian painter

Alexandra Exter Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster (née Grigorovich; ; ; 18 January 1882 – 17 March 1949), also known as Alexandra Exter, was a Russian and French painter and designer. As a young woman, her studio in Kiev attracted all the city's creative lum ...

, whose friendship and classes in color theory and design were an important influence. Galerie Zak hosted a solo-exhibition of her paintings in 1933, where she exhibited thirty-eight works. In that same year, she participated in the eleventh

Salon des Tuileries The Salon des Tuileries was an annual art exhibition for painting and sculpture, created June 14, 1923, co-founded by painters Albert Besnard and Bessie Davidson, sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, architect Auguste Perret, and others. The first year's ...

and “was also included in an exhibition of illustrated manuscripts by the calligrapher Guido at the Galerie Myrbor”, in which she illustrated Sept Poemes of Leon Paul Fargue. In her years in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, her work was highly praised by French critics.

Life in Havana

In 1934, following a showing at the Salon des Independants, Pelaez returned to live in her mother’s colonial-style house in

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

. The Cuba Pelaez returned to was in a state of economic uncertainty and political unrest. Beginning in the late 1920s, Cuba was searching for a new art that would reflect the national identity. In response, Pelaez departed from earlier vanguard strategies and turned to new approaches that involved depictions of Afro-Cuban and guajiro (peasant) subjects, while representing them in the adoption of European modernism. According to Ingrid Williams Elliot, Pelaez’s vibrant colors as well as thick lines are derived from Spanish-colonial architecture “integrating domestic objects with architectural decorations”. Peláez uses "Baroque ornamentation in her use of domestic colonial interiors to engage and merge multiple histories and assorted styles -- past and present -- to arrive at a contemporary Cuban idiom.” In 1935, Pelaez had a solo exhibition at a women’s club in Havana called the Lyceum, which helped gain exposure of her new modernist Cuban style. During this time, in the mid-thirties, Peláez was experimenting with "patterns, shapes and geometric relationships of tablecloths and fruit dishes, laying the groundwork for the geometric constructions and rhythmic patterns that have been associated with her architectural ornamentation in her work in the forties”, it also shows her awareness of

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

. Her signature still life paintings were praised for the use of native fruits and flora referencing her Cuban roots. In 1935-1936, Pelaez focused much of her paintings and drawings to the use of ink and pencil. The treatment of these drawings differs than her previous oil works, by distorting and exaggerating the figure with "sinuous line and light shading" that reference

and European Modernism. Peláez received a prize in the National Exposition of Painters and Sculptors in 1938, and collaborated on several art magazines in Cuba, such as '' Orígenes'', ''Nadie Parecía'', and ''Espuela de Plata''. In 1950 she opened a workshop at San Antonio de los Baños, a small city near Havana, where she dedicated herself, until 1962, to her favourite pastime of

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

. She sent her paintings to the

São Paulo Art Biennial The São Paulo Art Biennial ( Portuguese: ''Bienal de São Paulo'') was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennale (in existence since 1895), which serves as ...

in 1951 and 1957, and participated in 1952's

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

. In 1958 she was a guest of honour and jury member at the First Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking in Mexico City, although she pulled out of the raucous and controversial jury discussions based on what she reported to be “an openly Communist bias in the decisions.” Aside from painting and pottery, she dedicated time to

murals A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanish ...

, located mainly at different schools in Cuba. Her most important works of this type are a

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...

mural at the Tribunal de Cuentas in Havana (1953) and the facade of the Habana Hilton hotel (1957). She had a hard time selling her paintings as a living artists—she and her paintings, later named Amelias, achieved fame much later in life. Peláez died in Havana in 1968.

Estrada Palma 261

Amelia lived in her mother's house, which was a mix between a neoclassical design and a more traditional Cuban Creole architectural style house, for the rest of her years after her return to Havana, Cuba. Her house was a main source of inspiration after returning to a reclusive domestic lifestyle. The house was built in 1912, filled with colonial furniture of the baroque style. The house contained marble, crystal, wood, and ceramics in its interior. Amelia would also hang her paintings as decor.

Exhibitions

* 1924 Amelia Pelaez y Maria Pepa Lamarque, Asociacion de Pintores y Escultores, Havana * 1933 Amelia Pelaez Del Casal, Galerie Zak, Paris * 1935 Amelia Pelaez Del Casal, Lyceum, Havana * 1941 Amelia Pelaez, Norte Gallery, New York * 1943 Amelia Pelaez: Retrospectiva, Institucion Hispano—Cubana de Cultura, Havana * 1956 Amelia Pelaez, Nuestro Tiempo, Havana * 1957 Amelia Pelaez, Lyceum, Havana * 1959 Pintura de Amelia Pelaez, Instituto Municipal de Cultura, Marianao, Havana * 1960 Amelia Pelaez, Pintura y Ceramida 1920–1960 Lyceum Havana, Cuba * 1964 Oleos y Temperas de Amelia Pelaez, Galeria de la Habana, Havana * 1967 Dibujos de Amelia Pelaez, Museo de Arte Moderno Bogota. Amelia Pelaez; Goaches y Ceramicas, Lyceum, Havana * 1968 Amelia Pelaez: Exposicion Retrospectiva, Museo Nacional, Havana * 1977 Amelia Pelaez, Metropolitan Museum & Art Center, Miami * 1979 La Gran Pintora Cubana Amelia Pelaez, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City * 1980 Amelia Pelaez, Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota * 1987 Amelia Pelaez, Nineteenth Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paolo * 1988 Amelia Pelaez; A Retrospective, Cuban Museum of Arts & Culture, Miami * 2013 ''Amelia Peláez: The Craft of Modernity'',

Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...

Collections (selection)

The works of Peláez are held in the

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana The National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana) in Havana, Cuba is a museum of fine arts that exhibits Cuban art collections from the colonial times up to contemporary generations. History It was founded o ...

, the

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened Moderna Museet Malmö in Malmö. History The museum opened in Stockh ...

in Stockholm, and the

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pelaez, Amelia 1897 births 1968 deaths People from Yaguajay Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière 20th-century Cuban painters 20th-century Cuban women artists Cuban women painters Cuban muralists Women muralists Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro alumni 20th-century women painters