LOLÓ SOLDEVILLA

(1901-1971)

Untitled, circa 1950

Footnotes

This work is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity signed by Martha Flora Carranza Barba and dated La Habana, Cuba, 3 de abril del 2021.

Provenance
Galería Phelps, Caracas
Private Collection, Panama (acquired from the above in 1995)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner


The artists of Los Diez Pintores Concretos formed the definitive avant-garde of Latin American painting in the middle of the Twentieth Century, and none were more significant than Loló Soldevilla, Sandú Darié, and José María Mijares. Formally existing between 1959-1961, the style of the group was rooted in Concretism; a movement that emphasised the materiality and geometries of their compositions. The works presented here demonstrate the strength and subtle varieties of the visual language that Los Diez devised, resplendent in sculpture, multidimensional canvases, and works on paper.

Latin American Modernism has often been overlooked and undervalued. Subjected to the political isolationism of Fidel Castro's rule that forced many of its artists to flee in the years after the 1959 Revolution, the history of these pioneering groups has found renewed traction in recent decades as the Modernist canon is realigned. In the 1940s and 50s, following the Constitution of 1940 that engineered radical ideas and major social reforms, Cuba was undergoing a dramatic urbanisation and rising global standing that created an energetic and internationally minded artistic class. At the centre of Los Diez was Pedro de Oraá and Soldevilla, husband and wife whose Galería Color-Luz formed the nerve centre for the group's ideas since its founding in 1957. In a decade of insurrection and revolution, Los Diez were the leading artists of the era who established an identity for Cuban art that was contemporary, pioneering, and captivatingly unique.

Concretism emerged in earnest in the 1930s in Europe – a term coined by Theo van Doesburg, and championed by artists including Max Bill, Julio Le Parc, and Francois Morellet. It established a break from the school of abstract geometric painting that was deemed to be too 'referential' and a development of Cubist aesthetics that was essentially rooted in representative forms. In Cuba, Concretism became the language of the avant-garde, politically charged as a style that was international and progressive.

In Darié's Serie Dinamismo Espacial and Columna Espacial, the geometries and refined palette of Cuban Concretism is utterly recognisable; akin to Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers' compositional and colour theories whose interlocking elements reduced a painting to a series of discrete choices. Here, Darié's works demonstrate the advanced stages of geometric painting that border on the optical – taking the formulaic approach of the European school inherited from the Bauhaus and imposing a far richer, more complex strategy of delineating form through colour. The same rings true for Mijares' Untitled work from 1963, whose lattice of collaged blocks feels reminiscent of the sub-tropical architecture of Havana.

Soldevilla, however, is undoubtedly the grande dame of Cuban Concretism. Not only was she pivotal in the establishment of the Los Diez, but her artistic versatility and sense of material is supremely apparent in the two Untitled works presented here: a table sculpture and relief on canvas, respectively. Wonderfully balanced and elegant, Soldevilla's style and ability to defy her materials' weight shows her deft hand in the present works, pointing to why she has been reassessed as one of the most influential Latin American artists of the Twentieth Century.