María Teresa Toral

María Teresa Toral Peñaranda (20 May 1911 – 1994) was a Spanish chemist, pharmacist and printmaker. She worked with Enrique Moles in Madrid on atomic weight measurements during the 1930s, was twice imprisoned by Franco's government for supporting the Republic, and from 1956 lived in exile in Mexico, where she taught chemistry and built a second career as a printmaker.

Early life and education Toral was born in Madrid on 20 May 1911, the daughter of the notary José Toral Sagristá. She studied at the Central University of Madrid and graduated in both pharmacy and chemistry, finishing her chemistry degree in 1933 with the year's top prize. A 1936 fellowship to continue her studies in London was cut short by the Spanish Civil War.

Exile in Mexico In 1956, after several years working at pharmaceutical laboratories in Aranjuez, Toral left Spain through France and settled in Mexico. She taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), where she held chairs in inorganic and physical chemistry from 1963, and translated scientific texts from English, French, German and Italian. In Mexico she married the composer Lan Adomian.

Toral took up printmaking in 1960 and made it a parallel career, drawing on her chemistry to work with metal plates. Several of her series were inspired by the poetry of León Felipe, Miguel Hernández, Antonio Machado, Federico García Lorca and Pablo Neruda. Her first solo show was at the Diana Gallery in Mexico City in 1963. Her work was later shown across Mexico, Chile, the United States and Israel, and a retrospective covering her first seven years of printmaking was held at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana in 1967. Madrid first saw her work in 1975, and she returned to Spain in 1978 for a second show there. Her prints are held by the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Morelia, among other collections.