Lola Mora

Lola Mora
Lola Mora in 1903
Born	Dolores Candelaria Mora Vega (1866-11-17)November 17, 1866 El Tala, Argentina
Died	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Resting place	La Chacarita Cemetery
Education	Giulio Monteverde
Known for	Sculpture
Movement	Classicism

Dolores Candelaria Mora Vega (November 17, 1866 - June 7, 1936) know professionally as Lola Mora was a sculptor born in El Tala, Salta Province in Argentina. She is known today as a rebel and a pioneer of women in her artistic field.

Early life

Lola Mora was the daughter of Romualdo Alejandro Mora, a prosperous landowner of Tucumán Province and Regina Vega. She was the third born of seven children, three boys and four girls. Her parents (unusual behavior for the time) decided that the girls will have too, the best education possible. At seven years of age she was a boarding school pupil at Colegio Sarmiento de Tucumán Province. In 1885, within two days her parents died. Her older sister Paula Mora Vega married the engineer Guillermo Rucker, and together took care of the orphans.

The Nereids Fountain, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Education

At 20 years of age she began painting portraits, but soon turned to sculpting marble and granite. She studied art in her home province and then, with a scholarship, in Rome, Italy, where she created her greatest works, some of them by request of the Argentine government. In 1900 she was charged with creating two bas-reliefs for the Historical House of Tucumán (seat of Argentina's Declaration of Independence of 1816).

Her style and exposure were controversial and rebellious. In 1903 her The Nereids Fountain, created for the city of Buenos Aires, met bureaucratic problems at the city's Deliberative Council, which had the sculpture moved from place to place.

Near the end of her life, she did some extravagant business (such as financing petroleum surveys in Salta), and then retired with only a pension to support herself. After her death in Buenos Aires, in poverty and obscurity, friends of hers burned her letters, mementos and personal diaries.

Although it is not commonly known, Lola Mora obtained various patents. One included a system to project films without a screen (using a column of vapor), as well as systems for mining.

Works

Monument to Liberty along the Monument to the Flag in Rosario.

Some of Lola Mora's works are:

• The above mentioned bass-reliefs at the House of Tucumán, with the themes of the May Revolution's First National Government and the Declaration of Independence.
• A Statue of Liberty, also in San Miguel de Tucumán.
• The Nereids Fountain, now located at Costanera Sur, Buenos Aires, and the Avellaneda Memorial.
• Several sculpture groups placed in the historic center of Rosario, flanking the way to the propylaeum of the National Flag Memorial.
• Four allegoric sculptures called Peace, Justice, Liberty and Progress, originally created for the National Congress building, but then placed around the building of the Government House of San Salvador de Jujuy.

Sources

• VisiteTuc.com - A site about Tucumán.
• Practicosas.com.ar - A women's site with a romantic biography.
• Municipality of Jujuy - Official website.
• Universidad Nacional de Rosario - Pictures of the Oath Passage in Rosario, flanked by Lola Mora's sculptures.

List of major works

Monument to the gaucho, one of a series along the Monument to the Flag, Rosario.

External links

Media related to Lola Mora at Wikimedia Commons