Biography

Cordelia Urueta was born into a family in which politics played a major role. Thanks to the work of her father, Jesús Urueta, a very active politician and orator, she met important cultural figures, including the founder of the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, who motivated her to take classes at the Ex-Convento de Churubusco. Although her teachers found her thematic interests and handling of color to be unsatisfactory, Urueta discovered she had an unshakable will about how she wanted to approach art. This determination was reaffirmed in her courses on landscape painting in watercolor, when the artist opted to do portraits of her professor and even of the women who helped in her home rather than follow her teacher’s instructions. As a result of her husband’s job, she spent several years in Paris and New York. She was surprised upon her return to Mexico because she could see the country through different eyes: the singularity of its landscapes, colors and faces captured her attention, thereafter becoming a central theme in her work for many years.