Leonor Cecotto (died 8 May 1982, Asunción, Paraguay) was a 20th-century Latin American painter and engraver. Born in Argentina, she resided in Paraguay for most of her life, eventually becoming a prominent artist in the latter country. She was known for both her paintings and her xylographs.
Biography Cecotto was born in Formosa, Argentina, in 1918, 1920 or 1922. Her parents were Vicente González Leiva (Spanish) and Catalina Cecotto (Argentine). Her father was a piano tuner, and she initially studied piano, and taught piano to earn money. From a young age, Leonor Cecotto resided in Paraguay.
Cecotto was largely self-educated, in part because her father forbade her to attend the Ateneo Paraguayo. She was taught drawing and painting privately at home, by a French artist, Francis Eugene Charles. In the 1950s she approached João Rossi, a Brazilian professor at a YMCA-hosted arts workshop. Rossi—known as a driving force for a "modernization" of the contemporary Paraguayan plastic arts—introduced Cecotto to professional art. Cecotto was also influenced by Livio Abramo, a Brazilian-born engraver who also resided in Paraguay and taught woodcut courses.
As a result of her contributions, Cecotto is considered part of the Grupo Arte Nuevo, a school of influential 20th-century Paraguayan artists. Cecotto was a founder of the Centro de Artistas Plasticos del Paraguay, and taught drawing and painting at the Female Institute of Integrated Culture in Asunción.
She died in Asuncion in 1982.
Reception In Paraguay, Cecotto earned several awards, most notably the First Prize for Painting in the Second Salon d'Automne and the first prize in an engraving contest organized by the Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americano in 1966.
In his 1984 book Una interpretación de las artes visuales en el Paraguay, Paraguayan art critic (and future Paraguayan minister of culture) Ticio Escobar noted of the artist;
Cecotto's work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Library of France, the Art Museum of the Americas, in the collection of the University of Sydney, the Centro de Artes Visuales de Asunción, and in private collections.
Exhibitions Year Exhibition1951 Exhibited her work for the first time in Asunción. 1953 Participated in International Exhibitions, most notably of which was the International Exhibition of Painters in Chicago (United States of America)1960 Participated in the First Latin American Competition of Xylography in Buenos Aires. 1963 VII São Paulo Biennial Exhibition (Brazil).1963 I International Engraving Biennial in Santiago de Chile.1964 IV Engraving Biennial in Tokyo.1965 South American Art Exposition at the Braniff International, at the University of Texas.1965 II International Engraving Biennial in Santiago de Chile.1966 IV International Exhibition of Black and White in Lugano (Switzerland).1967 South American Engraving Exposition at the Cegrí Gallery in New York City.1967 Exposition of Contemporary Paraguayan Painting at the Panamerican Union in Washington D. C. 1968 First Ibero-American Biennial Exhibition of Painting, organized by the Coltejer Factory of Medellín (Colombia). 1968 Exposition at the Muestra Internacionale della Grafica at the Unión Florentina of Florence (Italy).1969 X São Paulo Biennial Exhibition.1971 XI São Paulo Biennial Exhibition.1971 Museum of Modern Art, New York1972 III Latin American Art Biennial, organized by the Coltejer Factory of Medellín. 2009 Retrospective show, El Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americano y Amigos del Arte.
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