Raquel Lázaro
Period: Modern
1917 - 2020

Submarine
(Submarino), 1978
oil and mixed media on canvas
29 3/4 x 39 3/4 inches




Raquel Lázaro was born in Havana in 1917. She studied at the San Alejandro Academy briefly, but felt stifled by the affect her academic training was having on her intuitive processes. Raquel Lázaro left art school to enroll at the University of Havana, where she earned a doctorate in pedagogy. In 1959, Lázaro fled to Miami and enrolled in the art department of Biscayne College. It was there where she flourished both as an artist and an arts teacher.


Raquel Lázaro’s primary preoccupations were with color and form. Her works often focus on organic, imaginary vessels and fish, executed with a precise and light line. Her works have been compared to the work of Angel Acosta León, Paul Klee, and Marc Chagall. Raquel Lázaro exhibited in collective exhibitions in Havana, as well as in group shows in Miami throughout the 1970’s and 80’s. In 1978, a number of works by the artist were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in Washington D.C. She is included in two important publications on Cuban art-- José Gómez-Sicre's Art of Cuba in Exile, published in 1989, and also in Outside Cuba: Contemporary Cuban Visual Artists/ Fuera de Cuba, Artistas Cubanos Contemporaneo, published in 1989 by Rutgers University. Raquel Lázaro died in Miami in 2020, at the age of 102.