Thelvia Marín Mederos

Cuban intellectual, sculptor, painter, poet, psychologist, journalist and writer. She obtained the distinction La utilidad de la virtud, awarded at the national level by the Sociedad Cultural José Martí to personalities and institutions with an outstanding trajectory in the promotion of martiano work. Illustrious Daughter of Sancti Spíritus. Mother of the renowned orchestra director Jorge López Marín.

She was born in Sancti Spíritus, daughter of Armantina Mederos Lorenzo, a Canarian woman who played piano and painted. And of Rogelio Marín Mir, Cuban with ancestors from the Balearic Islands. He played flute and saxophone and was a poet. Her mother, her Canarian roots, gave her her strength of character and firm determination. Her father gave her the belief that she could travel to the cosmos on a broomstick and reach any star. He died in 1952 and she in 1964.

She graduated in piano, theory, solfège and studied guitar. She has composed popular songs, which her son Jorge López Marín, composer and symphonic conductor, has converted into a concert for violin and orchestra. She plays on her German upright piano, not a grand piano, and says that she is a pianist from ten o'clock at night onwards.

She has three children: besides Jorge, Rogelio, an outstanding photographer and painter known as "Gory". One of his paintings belongs to the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, a showcase of the best painters of the 20th Century. And Thelvia, a graduate in Philosophy and an excellent goldsmith.

She went to Havana on the occasion of something then known as "La beca de los 19 pesos y 75 centavos", to study sculpture and painting. She graduated from San Alejandro in both specialties, in 1947 and 1949, respectively.

She is an only child. She first learned musical notes and then letters, by osmosis, listening to her parents. She is of the roads and has never felt at home. That is why her mother used to say that the only thing she did well in the house was packing her suitcase. She has traveled to all continents, except Asia.

She later studied two years of Philosophy and Literature; two years of Pharmacy, and completed the degrees in Psychology and Journalism. Her first poem was A la naturaleza and her first song, Leyenda india. Her songs are all popular, but her son took those melodies and converted them into symphonic music by presenting them in the format of a concert for violin and orchestra.

Books

Ego sum qui sum.
La amante japonesa del Obispo-Kamikaze.
Entrevista con cuatro dioses.
El ritual de la Cohoba.
Viaje al Sexto Sol

Sculptures

In Gran Canaria she erected three monuments: one dedicated to the Farmer, in Agüime; another to the Emigrant, in Telde, and the third to Leonor Pérez, Martí's mother, in her native land, Tenerife.

Monument to Serafín Sánchez Valdivia
Monument to Camilo CienfuegosNational Monument: the one erected to Serafín Sánchez in Sancti Spíritus; the one to Camilo Cienfuegos in Yaguajay, and the Lenin Hill, in Regla, City of La Habana.

Monument to Work, Disarmament and Peace, the largest of the five countries of Mesoamerica, and one of the largest in the world dedicated to this latter theme. It is at the University for Peace, an organization created by the UN in Costa Rica: it has a diameter of 21 meters and a height of 18 meters.

14 busts of the Cuban Apostle of independence in various countries of the subcontinent.

She brought to Luanda, Angola, the head of Aquilino Amézaga, the slave whom Serafín Sánchez taught to read and who accompanies him in the monumental complex of the Spiritan Plaza.

Five years as a professor at the National University of Costa Rica investigating Mesoamerican cosmogonies resulted in various sculptures of Taíno gods and a series of pictorial works.

Sculpture to Faustino Pérez, in the city of Cabaiguán.

Poetry

A la naturaleza.

Songs

Leyenda India.

Paintings

At the event currently celebrated by the Cohíba Hotel about the ritual of tobacco, she created a painting with the theme of the gods of the leaf and a humidor case, auctioned for 65 thousand dollars, which went to support Cuban Public Health funds.

Mural at the Casa Canaria, nine meters wide by 3.75 meters high.

Distinctions

The distinction La utilidad de la virtud, awarded at the national level by the Sociedad Cultural José Martí to personalities and institutions with an outstanding trajectory in the promotion of martiano work. Illustrious Daughter of Sancti Spíritus

To her surprise in 2000 the Maya-Quiché invited her to light the sacred fire and she became the only delegate who was not indigenous in the ceremony of the advent of the Sixth Sun, the new era for the inhabitants of that part of the planet.

Upon turning almost 90 years old, Thelvia has astonishing vitality, even still climbing scaffolding to sculpt her large pieces.