Vilma G, Holland | |
|---|---|
 Holland at an exhibition at Galeria Aurora | |
| Born | Vilma Isabel Gonzalez Cordova November 5, 1928 |
| Died | January 26, 2005 |
| Nationality | Puerto Rican |
| Known for | visual artist |
Vilma Isabel Gonzalez Cordova Holland (November 5, 1928 - January 26, 2005) was a Puerto Rican visual artist.
Holland (birth name: Vilma Isabel Gonzalez Cordova) was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico. [1] She was the fourth youngest of ten children in the large Gonzalez Cordova family. Her father, Jose, was a merchant while her mother, Rosa Candida, stayed at home raising the children. [2] The first floor of their large, two-story concrete home was the family business and the second floor was the living quarters. Jose sold groceries and provisions downstairs while his wife reared the children upstairs in their seven-bedroom home. Holland's artistic talents were discovered very early in life. A favorite family story is that as a child Holland was asked by a teacher to draw pictures of two famous Spanish poets. Upon completion, the teacher refused to believe that Holland had done the pen and ink portraits without using graph paper or tracing. [3] Accused of lying, she was sent home. Señora Gonzalez Cordova returned to the school with Holland and they documented her exceptional talent. [4]
Holland attended high school in her hometown of Caguas. Her teacher, Victor Torres Lizardi, a painter from Caguas, taught her pen and ink along with watercolors. [5] After some spirited family discussions, Holland followed her artistic interests majoring in art at Nazareth Junior College in Bardstown, Kentucky (currently Spalding University). [4] She received her diploma on June 3, 1948. Upon graduation, Holland returned home and enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico, UPR. One of her art teachers was Professor Guillermo Sureda. [6] He took an interest in her and continued her education with watercolors. Sureda was from Spain and his wife, like Holland, was from Puerto Rico. Professor Fran Cervoni, another art teacher, taught design to her. [3] Professor Cristobol Ruiz introduced Holland to oils. [3] Holland graduated with a bachelor's degree in art on May 27, 1949. [4] The UPR recognized her design abilities and Cervoni helped Holland obtain a fellowship to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City [4] where she studied under various artists, including Arnold Burchess. [5] Holland received an Associate in Applied Science from FIT on June 11, 1964. During this time she divorced her first husband, Emigdio Buonomo.
After college, Holland taught art at the University of Puerto Rico. She also worked in the corporate world where she specialized in corporate identity and product design. At this time, she and Senora Teresita Abella founded the Thomas Alva Edison School Caguas, Puerto Rico, a private school with an initial enrollment of five students. The school continued to grow, and currently serves over 600 pupils. [4] For this and other contributions to her home island, Holland was honored as one of the “Grandes Mujeres De Puerto Rico” (Grand Ladies of Puerto Rico). [3]
In the late 1960s, Holland and her mother rented a loft apartment in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. Shortly after moving in, Holland met her future husband, PJ Holland. They were married about one year later and moved to Caracas, Venezuela. [4] Holland turned all of her attention to painting and drawing. In April 1973, Holland was commissioned to create a pen and ink drawing of Blanca Rodriguez, the Primera Dama de Venezuela (“The First Lady of Venezuela”), which was published on the cover of Mujer Magazine. [7] When exhibition and framing costs increased, Holland started a company, Artes Vilma, to market her pen and ink greeting card designs. The cards became very popular. In 1975 the Canis Club de Venezuela (The Dog Club of Venezuela), an associate club of the Federacion Canina de Venezuela, asked her to design a poster to be used for their annual dog show. [4]
Meanwhile, Holland continued to paint and exhibit. She steadily built a reputation in the Venezuelan art community. Her work was usually developed around a theme and very often touched upon controversial subjects. Her personal crusade became addressing the plight of the indigenous Guajiro Indians living on Lake Maracaibo. Along the Guajira Peninsula, Holland observed and painted pictures of less fortunate villagers who lived in Palafitos that the people had built over the water. Many of Holland's paintings depicted the poverty of the Guajiro Indians, contrasted with the oil richness of their land. [4] The works were critical successes and led to raising social awareness of the inequality. [8] Several of these paintings were exhibited on November 30, 1975. [5]
In late 1976/early 1977, her husband was transferred to Puerto Rico, so Holland continued her career of painting and expanding her artistic vision. During this time, Holland met artist Alfonso Arana and began studying at his studio in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Under his influence, she began to experiment in Arana's style with pastels mixed with oils and “transparency in art.” The two became close friends and Arana once said of Holland, “…see a true artist at work.” [4]
In early 1990s her husband retired and within a few years the couple moved to the United States. They bought a home in Conyers, Georgia. Holland was not as active in the arts community as she had once been. Her memory was beginning to fail. She had given up painting relying only on pen & ink for her artistic release. Her husband continued to be active in the local arts community. A few artists reviewed some of Holland's paintings and they encouraged him to exhibit her work. [9] The local newspaper published an article devoted to Holland's art. [4] By this time, her overall health had shown increasing signs of marked deterioration, and a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was made. After six years of home care and two years of nursing home care, Vilma G. Holland died on January 26, 2005. [1]
Yolanda Rosa Monge Betancourt, known professionally as Yolandita Monge, is a Puerto Rican singer, actress, and television personality. She has been active in the music business since her teen years and has recorded 27 studio albums and two live albums, as well as several greatest hits compilations and special appearance recordings.
Ana González González better known as Ana G. Méndez was a Puerto Rican educator who founded the Ana G. Méndez University System in Puerto Rico.
The Archdiocese of San Juan de Puerto Rico is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church– comprising the northeast portion of the island of Puerto Rico. Its jurisdiction includes the municipalities of Dorado, Toa Baja, Cataño, Toa Alta, Bayamón, Guaynabo, San Juan, Trujillo Alto, and Carolina.
Jan D'Esopo is a painter and sculptor, mainly active in Puerto Rico.
Nicholasa Mohr is one of the best known Nuyorican writers, born in the United States to Puerto Rican parents. In 1973, she became the first Nuyorican woman in the 20th century to have her literary works published by the major commercial publishing houses, and has had the longest creative writing career of any Nuyorican female writer for these publishing houses. She centers her works on the female experience as a child and adult in Puerto Rican communities in New York City, with much of writing containing semi-autobiographical content. In addition to her prominent novels and short stories, she has written screenplays, plays, and television scripts.
Olga Albizu Rosaly (1924–2005) was an abstract expressionist painter from Ponce, Puerto Rico. Albizu Rosaly was the first woman dedicated to abstraction in Puerto Rico.
The twenty-second edition of the Caribbean Series was played in 1979. It was held from February 4 through February 9 with the champions teams from Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. The format consisted of 12 games, each team facing the other teams twice. The games were played at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which boosted capacity to 18.000 seats.
Luis Germán Cajiga is Puerto Rican painter, poet and essayist known for his screen printing depicting Puerto Rico's natural landscape, its creole culture, and religious motifs. He was born in 1934, in the municipality of Quebradillas, Puerto Rico, and his studio is currently based in the Old San Juan.
Cristina Córdova is an American-born, Puerto Rican sculptor who works and lives in Penland, North Carolina.
Deyanira África González Melo is a Mexican sculptor who generally works in ceramics, depicting elements of the human form, especially the torso, generally with mutilations and other disturbing elements to dispute the otherwise traditional and sensual depictions of the human body. She has exhibited her work since studying at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP) in Mexico as well as in Europe and the Caribbean. Her work has received recognition in Mexico and abroad, and is a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.
Susana Campos is a Mexican artist whose work tends to be complex compositions in various media generally introspective or commentary on society. She has had over thirty five individual exhibitions in Mexico and participated in various collective exhibitions in Mexico and abroad. Her work has been recognized with membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana since 1966, and has been written about by various noted art writers in Mexico.
Myrna Báez was a Puerto Rican painter and printmaker, considered one of the most important visual artists in Puerto Rico. She has been instrumental in promoting art and art education in her country. Her work has been shown and collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her work has been characterized as confident and complex. She lived and worked in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Imna Arroyo is a Puerto Rican artist. Her work is centered on printmaking and painting, particularly around the theme of "energia de mujeres", or "women's energy".
Vilma Reyes Díaz is a Puerto Rican poet, storyteller and educator. She has served as a teacher of Spanish language and has chaired the International Poetry Festival in Puerto Rico since 2010. She has been an influence on young Puerto Ricans in literary creation by offering free workshops for children and youth poetry and has published several books as a result of that work.
Consuelo González Salazar is a Mexican painter whose work has been recognized with membership in the country’s Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.
María Libertad Gómez Garriga was a Puerto Rican educator, community leader, and politician. She is one of the twelve women honored with a plaque in "La Plaza en Honor a la Mujer Puertorriqueña", in San Juan.
Miriam Medina de Zamparelli is a sculptor of the generation of 1980, renowned for her wood projects. She was an active member of the Association of Women Artists of Puerto Rico.
Patricia Torres, known as Patricia Torres is a Mexican artist. She uses different forms of visual expression, such as painting, drawing, printmaking, multimedia pieces and video. The themes in her work are related to the female body, its acceptance and the interventions that are made to normalize it, to ensure that it is accepted and valued in society.
Suzi Ferrer (born Susan Nudelman, also known as Sasha Ferrer, was a visual artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico from the mid-1960s to 1975. She is known for her transgressive, irreverent, avant-garde, art brut and feminist work.
Gilda Haddock Acevedo is a Puerto Rican actress, gospel singer and dancer. Haddock has acted in many films and telenovelas.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)