Amelia Pelaez
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In 1933 she held a one-woman show in Paris at the Galerie Zak. Upon her return to Cuba, Pelaez became a very active member of the Cuban modern art movement and was highly influential in effecting the break from the traditional styles of painting dictated by Havana's conservative San Alejandro Academy. In 1935 she was awarded the National Salon Prize. She began to produce paintings of still life of flowers and fruits incorporating elements typical of Cuban colonial architecture and ornamentation into her work. In 1943 an Amelia Pelaez retrospective was presented at the Institution Hispano Cubana de Cultura in Havana. The following year Pelaez participated in the exhibit Modern Cuban Painters at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the1950s she began to work with ceramics at the Santiago de las Vegas experimental studio in Havana. Over the next years she also received numerous mural commissions. She participated in the 1951 and 1957 Sao Paulo Biennials and in the 1952 Venice Biennial. In 1968 Cuba awarded her with the Orden nacional "30 anos dedicados al arte." Various institutions have presented solo or retrospective exhibitions of Pelaez's work including the Museo Nacional and Lyceum in Havana, the Museums of Modern Art in Bogota and Mexico City, and the Organization of American States. Her work was recently included in the exhibit Tarsila, Amelia, and Frida organized by the Caixa Foundation of Barcelona and Madrid in 1997.

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