Soledad Sevilla studied at the School of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi in Barcelona (1960-1965) and later attended the Seminar on Automatic Generation of Plastic Forms in the Centre for Calculus in the Complutense University of Madrid (1969-1971). During this period, she produced pictorial work that took geometric rigor as its normative basis. In 1979, she was awarded a grant by the Juan March Foundation and between 1980 and 1982 she furthered her studies at Harvard University, Massachusetts with a scholarship from the Joint Spanish and North-American Committee for Cultural and Educational Affairs. There she began work on her series Las Meninas (1983). In it, she began for the first time to use a grid-shaped structure which she interposed onto the motif, developed in the background of the painting. In this case, she used the device to interpret the space, light and atmosphere of Velázquez's famous painting 'Las Meninas'. She went on to make a series entitled Alhambras (1984-1986), again using the grid structure to filter and establish the plays of light and shade cast by the architectural features of the Alhambra palace in Granada onto the canvas. Since then, she has combined her painting with installations, which she uses as an extension or projection of the pictorial into space. In these projects, light and shade become the central axes. This can be seen in her pieces made with light beams made of copper wire, in which the light creates the same grid effect as her pictorial series, playing with viewers' sensorial and corporal perceptions. At the end of the 1990s, she eschewed her grids for a more lyrical abstraction, with a clearly organic dimension, evoking natural elements, such as the vegetation-covered walls in her series Insomnias (2000-2003) and the wood and metal textures in her latest series, working towards a poetics of the temporary and transitory.

Her first solo exhibition was held at the Galería Juana de Aizpuru in Seville in 1964. Since then, her work has been shown regularly at various venues, most notably at the Andalusia Contemporary Art Centre (Seville, 1985); the Palacio de los Condes de Gabia (Granada, 1991); the Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1995); the Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea (Donostia/San Sebastian, 2000); the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (Valencia, 2001); the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2011-2012); and the José Guerrero Centre (Granada, 2015). Throughout her professional career, she has received the National Award for Plastic Arts (1993), the Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (2007) and the Medal of the Academy of Fine Arts of Granada (2008), among other awards.

Roberto Díaz