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AMELIA
PELAEZ DEL CASAL
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Amelia
Pelaez, not only excelled in Visual Arts but
in Literature. One of her greatest accomplishments
was to integrate the European avant garde movement
to her Creole roots. Pelaez is considered as
one of the most authentic followers of the vanguardista
movement in Cuba.
She was born in Sancti Spiritus, the Villas,
on January 5, 1896. In 1915 she begins to study
art in the Academy San Alexander. She first
exhibited a series of romantic landscapes typical
of her early work in 1924 with great influence
of her mentor Leopoldo Romanach. She travels
to New York on a grant to perfect her art in
the school Arts Student League. She goes to
Paris in I927 to study French museums and academies.
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She
travels throughout different European countries including
Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia and
Hungary. She attended Grande Chaumiére, the
Ecole Nationale Superieure de Beaux Arts and the Ecole
du Louvre. From 1931 to 1934 Amelia is introduce to
the design and color theory from Alexandra.
Amelia was a follower of Matisse, Braque, and Picasso,
who played a key role in her personal version of synthetic
cubism. While in Parish, her stay culminated with
a one-person show at Gallery Zak in 1933. This opened
the doors to Amelia who received very good support
from the French critics. At this time she exhibited
thirty-eight paintings and gouaches of landscapes,
female figures, and dead nature.
Amelia's participation in literature during he stay
in France was related to "Les peintres Cubains
in Paris", an article she published at La Volonta,
about modern Cuban painters. She also participated
at the Exposition de Livres Manuscrits at the Galerie
Myrbor with her illustrations for Leon Paul Fargue's
Sept Poemes
She was active in the vanguard movement (1927-38)
and later on in the classical phase of modernism (1938-1951).
In the mid-thirties, in 1934, she returned to Cuba.
She became an active participant in the vanguard (1927-38)
and the classical (1938-51) phases of Cuban modernism.
During the next two years after she came back to the
island, she concentrated on drawing, integrating her
understanding of European modern art and formulating
a new subject matter based on her rediscovery of Cuba.
Her themes of bodegones, flowers and fruits do not
begin until 1936. Her austere version of Cubism was
noticeable with dead nature representing Cuba's flora.
She added arabesques and bright colors to her work
using her closest environment as a source of inspiration,
adding Cuban architectural elements, making her work
a symbol of cubanidad.
During the fifties Amelia became more abstract and
geometric, dedicating more time to ceramics at th
beginning of 1950 in the Ceramic experimental factory
of Santiago of Fertile valleys.
As a muralist, Pelaez stood out and her works embellished
several public buildings, among them the Hotel Habana
Libre; the School Jose Miguel Gómez, of Havana,
the Normal School of Santa Clara and many others.
Amelia Pelaez’s work is recognized throughout
the world for its richness and color, as well as the
inclusion of colonial architectonic elements.
Her work has received international recognition. Amelia
Pelaez is well-known as much in the National Museum
of Havana like in the Museum of Arte and Cuban Cultura
in Miami (1988); the Foundation Museum of Beautiful
Arts in Caracas (1991); the Museum of Modern Art of
New York and the Museum of Art of the Américas
de Washington, D.C. She dies in Cuba on April 8th,
1968. Most of her works is part of the Collection
of the National Museum of Cuba, other museums and
private collections around the world.
Recently Cernuda Art in Coral Gables held an exhibit
for "One Hundred Years of Cuban Landscape"
where many private collectors contributed to have
many of the most important artists in the last century.
