Meet Mirta Toledo

Mirta Toledo was born and educated in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has a degree in Visual Arts with a specialty in Painting from the National University of the Arts.
Mirta also has degrees in Painting and Sculpture from the Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts and in Drawing from the Belgrano National School of Fine Arts.

She received numerous awards for her drawings and sculptures from the Givré Foundation, the Hoy en el Arte Gallery, the Argentine Association of Visual Artists, and the Ministry of Culture and Education of the Nation, among others.

In 1987 she emigrated to the United States where she developed her artistic and literary career. While there, she received a scholarship from Coronado Studios in Austin, Texas, from Stone Metal Press (specialized workshops in artistic screen printing), and from NALAC (Leadership Institute of the Association of Latino Art and Culture), both in San Antonio, Texas.

Since 1990 her artwork, brought together in the Pure Diversity series, celebrate what she considers one of the greatest treasures of humanity: the cultural, religious, ethnic, and sexual diversity that exists on the planet, proposing to the viewer an alternative vision to the Eurocentric point of view. Pure Diversity: A Search for
Identity, was the topic of lectures at Barnard College in New York, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the University of Maryland in College Park, and Texas Woman’s University in Denton, among others.

During her twenty years of experience in the United States, her artwork received critical recognition for its quality and message. In 1998 she received the La Estrella Award, given to Outstanding Women in Art, by the Hispanic Women’s Network.

Her stories have been published in literary anthologies in Argentina, the United States, Brazil, Canada, and Spain. Her novel “La Semilla Elemental” (“The Elemental Seed”) was published by Editorial Vinciguerra (Argentina) and her short stories book “Dulce de Leche” by Editorial Torremozas (Spain).

Upon returning to Argentina in 2007, she continued giving identity to Diversity with her artwork. Since then, the theme of her work has been immigrants, Argentine Afro-descendants, and Native People, childhood, and death.

In 2019, her forty portraits of Afro-descendant Argentines painted between the years 2012-16 were declared of Cultural Interest of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, by the Legislature of that city.

Some of her Solo Shows in the United States were at the North Star Gallery (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Taller Puertorriqueño Art Gallery (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Diverse Arts Little Gallery (Austin, Texas), Hanes Art Center (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), and Backus Gallery (Honolulu, Hawaii). Her artwork was also exhibited in several institutions in Argentina, including the Stimulus Association of Fine Arts, the Golden Hall of the House of Culture, the OEI Cultural Space (Organization of Ibero-American States), and the Honorable Deliberative Councils of San Isidro and Morón, among others.

She was included in the book 100 Great Latin American Women by Lauren-Rea and Ehuen Matarozzo, published in 2019 by Editorial Atlántida, Buenos Aires, Argentina.