Dolores Soldevilla Nieto

She is one of the most important representatives of the geometric abstract movement and kinetic art. There are many words to define Loló's personality, as well as many reasons to establish her importance within Cuban art. Among the foremost are audacity and energy, intellect and imagination, perseverance, dedication, both galactic and earthly. Her constant capacity for experimentation, for violating canons or transgressing eras, are sufficient reasons to reveal her transcendence.

Loló descended through her maternal line from Marshal Lannes, something that explains her French affiliation. A graduate in singing from the Falcón Conservatory, her name became famous when female ensembles entertained the nights of the Prado's Aire Libres. Loló's Orchestra competed with Anacaona and others that played in the place.

Loló Soldevilla began painting in 1948 and the following year settled in the French capital, where she studied sculpture at the Grande Chaumière academy.

After her presentation in several group exhibitions sponsored by the University City of Paris, she returned to Cuba in 1950 and exhibited in the halls of the Lyceum in Havana her first solo show: Loló. Sculptures. Subsequently, she did so at the School of Law of the University of Havana under the title 20 oils by Loló.

She returned to France and in mid-1951 entered the workshop of abstract painters Dewasne and Pillet, with whom she worked for two years. In parallel, she attended a course by professors Hayter and Cochet on printmaking techniques. The exchanges she had with representatives of the Paris School defined, to a great extent, the direction of her work, to the point of causing a significant change in her creative process. She joined the so-called Paris Vanguard and participated in its exhibitions.

In 1953, the Arnaud Gallery hosted the joint exhibition Loló/Varela, which received a good reception from specialized critics. In 1955 she exhibited luminous reliefs at the Réalités Nouvelles gallery, in clear harmony with her constant thirst for experimentation. The execution of those plastic objects, to which she incorporated artificial light, constituted in large measure the fruit of the professional relationships she had established with Spanish kinetic artist Eusebio Sempere, with whom she exhibited in 1954 at the Circle of the University of Valencia, Spain.

Around 1956 and after frequent trips to the island, she returned permanently to Cuba. That year she organized, based on the numerous originals and reproductions she brought with her, the important exhibition Painting of Today. Vanguard of the Paris School, which was exhibited at the Palace of Fine Arts in Havana.

At the beginning of 1957 and with the sponsorship of the National Institute of Culture (INC), she presented her personal exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts: Loló. Oils, collages, luminous reliefs 1953-56. That year she traveled to Venezuela, invited by Integral magazine, and held a successful exhibition in the East Professional Center Room, in Villa Flor, Caracas. Her connection to that country went back to the relationships she had maintained in Paris with some members of the group The Dissidents, formed by Venezuelans residing there. Upon her return, in October, she founded, together with Pedro de Oraá, the Color-Luz Gallery and, at the end of the nineteen-fifties, joined the group Ten Concrete Painters.

After the revolutionary triumph she carried out other tasks, such as professor of visual arts at the School of Architecture (1960-61), toy designer at the National Institute of the Tourism Industry (INIT, 1962), and editor of the newspaper Granma (1965-71).

In 1965 she founded the plastic group Space, and in 1966, the Havana Gallery presented her exhibition Op art, pop art, the moon and me.

She ventured into literature and also exercised, with notable success, art criticism. Among her titles are Going, Coming, Going Again (chronicles), The Lantern and Bombardment. Author of the two-act ballet Ten Thousand Thread.

After her death, a major retrospective of her work was organized in the gallery of the building of the Ministry of Public Health. The National Museum of Fine Arts (Cuba) in Havana exhibited in 2006 an anthological exhibition of her work titled Loló: An Imaginary World.

Her works have been included in two important international exhibition projects organized in the present century: Art of Cuba, a traveling exhibition through several Brazilian cities (2006), and Cuba: Art and History. From 1868 to Our Days, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, Canada (2008) and at the Groninger Museum in Holland (from May to September 2009).

Loló Soldevilla also stood out for her commendable actions as a promoter of Cuban art, both within and outside the country.