Dolores Soldevilla Nieto, known as Loló Soldevilla, was born on June 24, 1901, in Havana, Cuba.
Loló Soldevilla, a convinced activist and avid defender of culture in her country, was eventually appointed in 1949 as Cuba's Cultural Attaché for Europe, taking up residence in Paris. That same year, encouraged by her friend and artist Wifredo Lam, she joined the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and began her artistic career in 1950.
During her time living in Paris, she established connections with prominent European artists and organized numerous exhibitions centered on Cuban Abstraction of the mid-century. After returning to Cuba in 1956, she played a key role as a link between the European avant-garde and the new representatives of abstraction in Latin America.
Loló Soldevilla passed away in 1970. Her work has recently received renewed attention, as demonstrated by the numerous exhibitions organized in Cuba, throughout Latin America and beyond. In 2008, her work was included in the exhibition Cuba: Art and History from 1968 to Today, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada. In the same year, her works were presented at the Groningen Museum, Netherlands.
In 2011, the Juan March Foundation, Madrid, hosted the exhibition Cold America – Geometric Abstraction in Latin America 1934-1973, which included works by Loló. In 2014, Loló’s works were included in Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict: Abstract Art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami.
In 2015, Loló’s work was featured in Concrete Cuba, at David Zwirner Gallery, London. The exhibition traveled, in 2016, to the David Zwirner Gallery in New York. That same year, her work was chosen by curator Okwui Enwezor to be part of the exhibition Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965, held at Haus der Kunst, Munich.
In recent years, Loló’s work has been part of several major exhibitions: Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art since 1950, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (also presented later at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis); Sensitive Constructions: The Latin-American Geometric Experience in the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Centro Cultural FIESP, São Paulo; and Triángulo: Loló Soldevilla, Sandú Darié, and Carmen Herrera, Cisneros Fontanals Foundation (curated by Elsa Vega and Ella Fontanals-Cisneros), Miami.
In 2018, the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain in Paris included Loló’s works in the exhibition Géométries Sud: du Mexique à la Terre de Feu. That same year, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid presented Paris Without Regret: Foreign Artists 1944-1968, which included works by Loló Soldevilla, recognized as one of the most significant foreign artists residing in Paris during that period.
In 2019, Sean Kelly Gallery in New York held an important solo exhibition of the artist entitled Constructing Her Universe: Loló Soldevilla, and published the first catalogue dedicated to her work.