Petrona Viera
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24 May 1895
Petrona Viera | |
|---|---|
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| Born | María Petrona Viera Garino 24 May 1895 |
| Died | 4 October 1960 (aged 65) |
| Movement | Planismo |
María Petrona Viera Garino (24 March 1895 – 4 October 1960), commonly known as Petrona Viera, was an Uruguayan painter known for being the first female professional painter in Uruguay and for her participation in the Planismo movement.[1]
Petrona Viera was born in Montevideo to Carmen Garino and Uruguayan President Feliciano Viera. At the age of two, Viera contracted meningitis, which left her deaf. Her parents considered that her education was important, so they hired a French teacher that specialized in deaf education, Madeleine Larnaudie, who taught her lip reading and sign language.[2]
Around the age of 20, Viera began to take private painting lessons with the Catalan artist Vicente Puig, but she stopped working with him when he left the country a few years later. In 1922, she began to take lessons from Guillermo Laborde, who influenced her to join the Planismo movement. She began to exhibit her paintings in 1923 in Montevideo, and had her first solo exhibition in 1926 at Galería Maveroff.[3] She participated in various collaborative exhibitions in Buenos Aires, París, Chile and Bolivia amongst others. Guillermo Laborde's death in 1940 affected her deeply and led her to change the direction of her work. After his death, she worked with Guillermo Rodríguez and began producing engravings, watercolors, and ceramics.[4] She continued to paint, but her themes changed, and she began to paint more landscapes and nature scenes than her previous scenes of children's life.
