Biography

Born in Havana, Cuba, 1943, Lia Galletti is an established painter and printmaker, known for her abstract expressionist work. She moved to New York City in 1960, where she finished her education and started to paint and exhibit her work in New York’s Greenwich Village and other venues on the east coast. During the 70’s and 80’s Lia worked in advertising agencies in NY and Miami, specializing in architectural renderings in pen and ink and watercolors as a free-lance artist. In 1986-1987 she studied etching at the Metropolitan Museum Printmaking Workshop, Coral Gables, FL. Lia has been painting ever since, developing her individual style and technique. Lia exhibited her work and received an award at The Boston Printmakers, Brockton Art Museum, Boston, MA (1988). Her work is in their collection, as well as in the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, where she participated at the Ibero American Printmaking Biennial of San Juan, Puerto Rico (1987). She recently participated in the Tokyo International Mini Print Triennial at Tama Art University Museum, Tokyo, Japan, the International Biennial Print Exhibit: 2020 ROC, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the Guanlan International Print Biennial China 2017, 2019, 2021 China Print Museum, Guanlan, Shenzhen, China and the 4th Geoje International Art Festival, Haegeumgang Art Museum in South Korea. 

Lia has had solo exhibitions in Washington, DC; Orisha, Kingston, Jamaica and in Florida at Art Miami and Art Americas in Miami, Interstices at the Capitol Complex in Tallahassee and recently at Kendall Art Center, Miami, Florida. She has participated in collective expositions in the US, including Caribbean Visions: Painting and Sculpture (a traveling exhibition in 1995); Cadaqués, Spain; Ottawa, Canada; and Mexico City (VI Bienal Iberoamericana de Arte Pedro Domecq). She participated in the Art In Embassies program in 1995 at the American Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica. Lia has received several awards, including State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship HM Visual Arts/Painting (2000). Her work is in several private and public collections, including Bacardi International and The Art Museum of the Americas at the Organization of American States, Washington, DC. Her work has sold at Sotheby’s New York. Lia Galletti currently lives in Miami, Florida, where she has her studio.

 My intention when I paint is to capture an illuminated moment or a movement in my life which inspires me to materialize that vision through the alchemy of painting.

Abstract art has been my focus for the last thirty years. My career as an artist started very early, painting representational work. It was the sixties, at the end of the New York School era and I was exposed for the first time to abstract art, causing an impression on me. Years later my work evolved to expressionism in my paintings and printmaking, which in turn evolved to the abstraction I create today.

I do believe that change is essential in the creative process and only constant experimentation shows me what I see in my visions, a non-existing reality.