Antonia Matos

Guatemalan painter Antonia Matos received an Honorable Mention at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics in the Art Competitions in the category Paintings for her work Course of Pirogues. In the art catalog her painting was reproduced but marked as “out of competition”. She was a little-known artist with only two solo exhibitions at the beginning of the 1930s in Paris and Guatemala City.

As a student, Matos often sat as a model for nude paintings, which caused a scandal. When her father was appointed ambassador to the League of Nations, she continued her studies in Paris, where she also attended a cooking school. After her return from Paris, Matos also painted nudes, which caused her to be ostracized by society and the art scene. She was married to a French pilot, but she outlived him by almost 40 years. In 1992 she fell ill with pneumonia and never really recovered. Matos become a symbol for women painters in Guatemala, as despite the big obstacles she faced there in the 1930s, she dared to paint freely, and was far ahead of her time. Only a limited number of her paintings survived.