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. 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.

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. 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. Lázaro died in Miami in 2020, at the age of 102.

The painter and poet Lourdes Gómez Franca was born to a prominent family in Havana in 1933. She displayed an aptitude for arts from an early age. At the age of 20, she began her formal studies in painting at the San Alejandro Academy, and by the 1950’s had cultivated a critically lauded style. In 1957, Gómez-Franca had her first of two solo shows Havana’s Lyceum. Later that year, at the age of 24, she traveled to Paris and studied painting under Andre Lhote and engraving under Stanley Hayter. Upon returning to Cuba, her work was the subject of a second solo show at Havana’s Lyceum in the year 1960.

Later that same year, Gómez Franca permanently relocated to Miami, Florida. The artist became established in the Coral Gables and Coconut Grove communities, exhibiting frequently with fellow exiled artists such as Dionisio Perkins and Miguel Jorge. In 1971, she had a solo show at the American Art Institute in Miami, her first one-person exhibition in the United States. Five years later, in 1976, the Bacardí Gallery in Miami presented her second solo exhibition, and in 1981, the Interamericas Art Gallery in Coral Gables presented her third American solo show, Lourdes Gomez Franca. In addition to painting, the artist published four collections of poetry between 1964 and 1993.

Stylistically, Lourdes Gómez Franca was distinguished by her dynamic contrasts of colors, subtle impasto, and bold, fauvist line work. The artist concerned herself with spiritual, nostalgic, and personal themes, expressed through renderings of landscapes, portraits, still-lifes, and interiors. Lourdes Gómez Franca passed away in Miami in 2018. Her work is included in the University of Miami's Lowe Art Museum and in many private collections throughout South Florida.