She was a Cuban artist, considered one of the most important of the 20th century and a key figure of the first modern avant-garde in Cuba. Initially trained at the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, where she was a favorite disciple of Leopoldo Romañach, she completed her training in New York and, above all, in Paris between 1927 and 1934. There she studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the École du Louvre and the Académie Moderne of Fernand Léger, receiving the decisive influence of constructivist Russian Alexandra Exter, as well as cubism and other currents of the School of Paris. Upon his return to Cuba, Peláez developed a highly personal style that fuses the formal rigor of Cubism with the tropical exuberance and ornamental motifs of Cuban architecture and domestic life: colonial bars, stained glass, furniture and fruits seen through a network of thick black lines and a palette of intense, luminous colors. His work includes oil paintings, drawings, ceramics and murals.