page_title: Amelia Peláez
section_title: Life in Havana
hierarchical_section_title: Amelia Peláez / Life in Havana
caption_attribution_description: English: the "camel", a public transport bus in La Habana, in front of the Hotel Havana Libre
context_page_description: Amelia Peláez del Casal was an important Cuban painter of the Avant-garde generation.
context_section_description: In 1934, following a showing at the Salon des Independants,  Pelaez returned to live in her mother’s colonial-style house in Cuba. The Cuba Pelaez returned to was in a state economic uncertainty, as well as in an unsettled political climate. Peláez departed from earlier vanguard strategies after her return to Cuba. In the late 1920s, Cuba searched for a new art that would reflect the national identity. In response upon her return, Pelaez turned to strategies 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. 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 Cubism 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. She sent her paintings to the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1951 and 1957, and participated in 1952's Venice 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, located mainly at different schools in Cuba. Her most important works of this type are a ceramic 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.
caption: Mural by Amelia Peláez for the Habana Hilton
exif: {"Image Make": "Konica", "Image Model": "KD-220Z", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "1,40k", "Image DateTime": "2007:07:22 21:56:31", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "218", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "10228", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7720", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/71", "EXIF FNumber": "871/100", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:07:22 21:56:31", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:07:22 21:56:31", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "31/5", "EXIF ApertureValue": "5", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "476"}