Lola Massieu

Lola Massieu, the artistic name of Dolores Massieu Verdugo, was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1921 and died in the same city in 2007. The CAAM identifies her as a painter and places her early training in the studio of her uncle Nicolás “Colacho” Massieu, with whom she studied drawing between 1932 and 1938.

Her work began with still lifes, portraits, landscapes and flowers, and moved during the 1950s and 1960s toward abstraction and informalism. In 1958 she held her first exhibition at El Museo Canario; in 1961 she founded Grupo Espacio with Pino Ojeda, Felo Monzón, Rafaely Bethencourt and Francisco Lezcano; and in 1962 she showed work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona and at the Spanisches Kulturinstitut in Munich.

The CAAM highlights her experimentation with materials such as bitumens, tars, resins, oils and gold leaf, as well as her participation in artistic groups such as Espacio and Espiral. In 1990 she received the Canary Islands Fine Arts Prize. Her work was revisited by the CAAM in the 2016-2017 retrospective Inquietud abstracta and in the 2021 centenary exhibition Lola Massieu / Miró Mainou. Homenaje 1921-2021.