It is well documented that the absence of women in art history text books is a known fact. For those of us interested in Latin American art, it can be very frustrating to continually be confronted with the scarcity of documentation about women artists from our part of the world. If one has a particular interest in the art of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the frustration is likely to be even greater. With the exception of a select group of pre-revolution Cuban males, the artists of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean have historically suffered from low international visibility.  The Cuban scholar Yolanda Wood refers to this when she explains that “the definition of Latin American art, by historians from the nations of ‘mainland’ Latin America, has so often excluded…the Caribbean.” This climate of invisibility has been even more stifling for the women artists of these countries, including the women artists of Cuba.

Focusing on gender-based exclusion, Puerto Rican artist and author María De Mater O’Neill asks, on behalf of women artists, “What is women’s art?” Before investigating possible answers, she reminds the reader that “art presented in museums echoes the ideology that is in power,” and that forums like the museum, newspapers, and magazines, are at the service of the established. Referring back to her original question about women’s art, she asks, “Who will control the significance of representations?” She raises questions about which Caribbean women we know, which Caribbean women we have heard of, and which Caribbean women we do not know at all.

Addressing these questions, this article will consist of three parts. Part I will focus on Puerto Rican women artists. Parts II and III (in future editions) will focus on women artists from the Dominican Republic and Cuba, respectively. This article also focuses on women artists of the first half of the twentieth century or earlier. I feel that they were more deprived of acknowledgment than their contemporary counterparts. I also wish to refute the suggestion that women artists are a new phenomenon in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

One valuable publication for identifying Puerto Rican women artists is La Pintura Puertorriqueña, by Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño. Gaya Nuño mentions Cipriana Campeche, María Consuelo Peralta de Riego Pica, Beatriz Massana, Sofia, Cecilia Orta Allende, and María Rodriguez Señeriz. Cipriana Campeche (b. 1774) was a niece of Puerto Rican master painter José Campeche. Her last name, at birth, was Andino. Another artist, María Consuelo Peralta de Riego Pica, attended the third public exhibition in Puerto Rico (Industry, Agriculture and Fine Arts of the Island of Puerto Rico), celebrated in July of 1860. As the painter of a copy of San Felipe Benicio, originally by José Campeche, held at the convent of the Carmelitas in Puerto Rico, she also produced a small landscape, bearing her signature and dated 1845, which is part of a private collection in Barcelona.  

Another artist mentioned was Beatriz Massana. She is known to be the painter who produced Santo Tomas de Villanueva, and participated in the first public exhibition in Puerto Rico (Industry, Agriculture and Fine Arts of the Island of Puerto Rico) in 1854. Beatriz Massana was also a member of another set of sisters who also submitted three paintings, with religious motifs, at the first public exhibition in Puerto Rico. Another woman mentioned by Gaya Nuño was Sofia. Known only by her first name, she signed a still life canvas in 1876. The painting is in the museum of the University of Puerto Rico.

The author also mentions three sisters, Asunción Cletos Noa, Magdalena Cletos Noa and Amalia Cletos Noa (1830-1899 or 1900). Born during the first half of the 19th century, they were the daughters of painter/teacher Don Cletos Noa. They all submitted paintings at the first public exhibition in Puerto Rico (Industry, Agriculture and Fine Arts of the Island of  Puerto Rico), in 1854. Documentation about the exposition is preserved in the National Historic Archive in Madrid, in the form of manuscripts and a catalogue of the participants.

Research has attributed to Amalia Cletos Noa such works as Virgen Del Carmen (1861), in the collection of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, and a portrait titled Pescador Neopolitano, which is part of a private collection. She painted in her father’s studio and became a copyist of the Puerto Rican master, José Campeche. She also assisted her father in his work on portraits and religious paintings.

 During the years 1889 to 1904 the painter Francisco Oller founded, in Puerto Rico, on different occasions, academies for drawing and painting for young women. Between 1889 and 1904 the following students registered in the academies: Mercedes Blanco, María Aliaga, María Caro, Amparo Fernández, Elena Porrata, Abigail Paniagua, Isabel Blanco, Elisa Cerra, Elena Enríquez, and his two daughters Georgina Oller (b. 1870) and Mercedes Oller (b. 1872). Between June 28th and July 4th, of 1901, an exposition of the academy students took place. The exposition’s memoirs were published.  

More information exists about Puerto Rican women artists born in the early 20th century. It is documented that some of them studied abroad and earned degrees in fine arts. Among them are Luisa Ordóñez (1909-1975) who received a scholarship to study abroad in 1935, María Luisa Penne del Castillo (b. 1913) studied at the Pratt Institute and the Art Institute of Chicago. She obtained a Ph.D. from Columbia. Luisa Geigel (b. 1916) attended the Art Student League of New York and became one of the first artists in Puerto Rico to deal with the nude in her painting. Cecilia Orta Allende (b. 1923), graduated in 1954 from the National School of Plastic Arts in Mexico. She completed a mural, Añoranza de Mi Raza Negra (1958) in the Hotel San Juan Intercontinental. Olga Albizu (b. 1924) was a pioneer of abstract expressionism in Puerto Rican Art. María Rodríguez Señeriz (b. 1928) attended the University of Puerto Rico, worked at the Art Student League in NYC, attended the Academy Dibelle Arti in Florence, the Grande Chaumiere in Paris, and the Academia San Fernando in Madrid.

As a person interested in the art of women and the art of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the discovery of documentation about women artists from Puerto Rico is exiting. It is encouraging to have found that the scarcity of women artists, in the literature of the art world, is not as insurmountable an obstacle as it appears to be. They have existed in considerable numbers. The story is just not being told. And when told, usually by men, geopolitical factors compete with gender, as reasons for exclusion.