Clotilde Crespo de Arvelo

Clotilde Angelina Crespo de Arvelo (19 September 188720 June 1959) was a Venezuelan poet, novelist and sculptor.

Biography

De Arvelo was born on 19 September 1887 in Los Teques, Miranda to Antonio Crespo and Rufina Pérez de Crespo. She was a member of the Centro Nacional de Damas Católicas, the Caracas Athenaeum and the Inter-American Commission of Women in 1936.

She married Enrique Arvelo, a South American agent for the Chalmers Automobile in Detroit, Michigan, and together they had four children. They lived in Plaza Sucre in Caracas until her death on 20 June 1959.

Awards and recognitions

Aside from being a writer, de Arvelo was recognized also for her artworks and sculptures:

• 1919: Gold Award for her exhibition of wax flowers, 1919 at the National Exposition "Louisiana Hacienda".
• 1930: Silver Award for her artistic works and artificial flowers at the International Exposition of Liège.

Nobel Prize in Literature

In 1930, de Arvelo was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by a member of the Academia Venezolana de la Lengua, the philologist Manuel María Villalobos, becoming the first Latin American female writer to be nominated for the prize.

During the deliberations, the Nobel Committee noted that the titles of de Arvelo's writings "already aroused suspicion that they were hardly of the quality required for the Nobel Prize competition." Her nomination was eventually rejected because her works:

Publications

• Impresiones de viaje por los Estados Unidos ("Travel Impressions of the United States", 1915)
• Flores de invernadero ("Greenhouse Flowers", 1921)
• A traves de los Andes ("Across the Andes", 1926)
• De los predios del Senor ("From the Lord's Lands", 1927)
• Visiones de Europa ("Visions of Europe", 1928)

References