Leonilda González

Leonilda González (2 February 1923 – 4 January 2017 ) was a Uruguayan painter and engraver, founder of the Montevideo Engraving Club. Her work is represented in the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum and the National Museum of Visual Arts, as well as in private collections in Uruguay and other countries. In 2006 she was recognized with the Figari Award for her career.

She was married to , also an engraver and member of the Engraving Club, for six years.

González frequently participated in the salons of the Montevideo Engraving Club and in the collective exhibitions of the Union of Contemporary Plastic Artists. She exhibited her work individually both nationally and internationally, in Buenos Aires, Havana, Panama, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and elsewhere. She contacted graphic artists from socialist countries, and was a delegate at the Intergrafik Graphic Arts Symposium in Berlin in 1967.

Her woodcuts are compiled in the book Títeres, and in the 1994 book Esta soy yo she published her autobiography. Later, in 2011, she published a second autobiographical book, La carpeta negra, where she recounted her life during exile.

Leonilda González died in Montevideo on 4 January 2017 at age 93.

Montevideo Engraving Club In 1953, together with Nicolás Loureiro, Susana Turiansky and other artists, Leonilda González founded the Montevideo Engraving Club, in order to disseminate and democratize access to art through graphic techniques that allow reproducing works in large print runs at low cost. González worked as a woodcut teacher and actively participated in the editions, exhibitions, and engraving shows of this entity, of which she was a member of the board of directors from 1953 until she left the country during the civic-military dictatorship in 1976. During her exile, between 1976 and 1986, she settled first in Peru and then in Mexico, representing the Engraving Club abroad in her travels through various countries of Latin America.