Dolores Candelaria Mora Vega (17 November 1866 – 7 June 1936), known professionally as Lola Mora, was an Argentine sculptor. She is known today as a cultural rebel and a pioneer of women in her artistic field.

Early life

Dolores was the daughter of Romualdo Alejandro Mora, a prosperous landowner of Tucumán Province of Spanish origin and Regina Vega. She was the third born of seven children, three boys and four girls. Her parents decided that the girls should also have the best education possible (unusual behavior for the time). In 1870, her parents moved the family to San Miguel del Tucumán when Lola was four years old. At seven years of age, she was a boarding school pupil at Colegio Sarmiento de Tucumán Province. In 1885, both her parents died within two days. Her older sister Paula Mora Vega married the engineer Guillermo Rucker, and together took care of the orphans.

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, studying under Costantino Barbella and Giulio Monteverde. In 1900 she returned to Argentina and, with government connections, was commissioned to create two bas-reliefs for the Historical House of Tucumán. As her career developed, her sensual style and her status as a female artist made her controversial. In 1903 her Nereids Fountain, created for the city of Buenos Aires, met bureaucratic problems at the city's Deliberative Council, which had the sculpture moved around from place to place. Near the end of her life, she entered into 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, her friends burned her letters, mementos, and personal diaries. 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. Mora was the subject of the 1996 film Lola Mora (film), directed by Argentine director Javier Torre.

Works

Mora's works include (in Buenos Aires unless otherwise noted):