Nela Arias-Misson

Nela Arias-Misson (September 8, 1915 – July 17, 2015) was a Cuban-born abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. Nela Arias-Misson was a contemporary and friend of the 20th-century painters Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Karel Appel, Walasse Ting, and Antoni Tapies. She exhibited internationally and was connected to many established figures in the art world throughout her life. Her art synthesizes her experiences as an ahead-of-her-time, determined, female artist, linking abstract expressionism in Cuba, the United States, and Europe.

Biography

Early life and education Nela Arias was born in Havana, Cuba on September 8, 1915. Her father, Amadeo Arias Rodriguez (who died when she was a child) and her mother, Sira Garcia Menendez, were from Asturias, Spain. They owned tobacco plantations in Cuba and traveled back and forth to Spain until World War I broke out and made trans-Atlantic travel impossible. In 1949, she married New York lawyer Sidney Kraft. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1955. During these years, she studied with Italian-American sculptor Leo Lentelli and at the Art Students League of New York, a formative school for the likes of Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Clement Greenberg, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko and Cuban artist of Asturian background, Amelia Pelaez del Casal.

Provincetown Nela Arias was a student of Hans Hofmann (one of the major exponents of Abstract Expressionism and a former teacher at the Art Students League of New York) from 1957 to 1959. She became entrenched in the Provincetown, Massachusetts art community where she formed relationships and connected with internationally known figures such as Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning. She developed a friendship with Karel Appel, founder of the COBRA group. Nela Arias also became a close friend of Walasse Ting, an abstract-expressionist painter (with whom she collaborated on several works) known for authoring art books that included the participation of artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Kiki Kogelnik, Joan Mitchell, and Sam Francis. During these years Nela Arias showed at the Provincetown Art Association and New Gallery in Provincetown and wins first prize at the National Association of Women Artists of the Argent Gallery in New York in 1959, from which she resigned, wanting to receive the same recognition that male artists did.

Return to the United States The Arias-Missons lived in Europe until 1976 when they returned to the United States, and moved to a rural part of New Jersey. Nela Arias-Misson continued to paint, but lived quietly and withdrew from the art world. She occasionally exhibited individual pieces in New York, Dallas, and Paris and Germany.

In 1993 she was in an automobile accident that required many major surgeries on her left arm and she was no longer able to paint as before.

In 1995 Nela moved to New York City where she lived until she made her final move in 2002 when she settled in Miami.

Legacy Nela Arias-Misson died in Miami on July 17, 2015, just a few weeks short of her 100th birthday. Her remains rest in a niche at El Cementerio de la Iglesia de San Esteban de Covera, Aviles, Spain.