Clotilde Crespo de Arvelo

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is de Arvelo and the second or maternal family name is Crespo.
Clotilde Crespo de Arvelo
Born19 September 1887
Los Teques, Miranda, Venezuela
Died20 June 1959(1959-06-20) (aged 71)
Caracas, Venezuela
Occupationsnovelist, poet and sculptor

Clotilde Angelina Crespo de Arvelo (19 September 1887 – 20 June 1959) was a Venezuelan poet, novelist and sculptor.[1][2]

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.[3]

She married Enrique Arvelo, a South American agent for the Chalmers Automobile in Detroit, Michigan, and together they had four children.[4] They lived in Plaza Sucre in Caracas until her death on 20 June 1959.[4]

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

Main article: 1930 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.[5][6]

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."[7] Her nomination was eventually rejected because her works:

"consist of a few very thin booklets of travel descriptions, with thinner content, mostly accounts of hotel life, entertainment and toilets, and an even smaller booklet, Flores de invernadero, attempts at short stories and descriptions of moods. All of it is nice and completely meaningless, if you ignore the pretension in publishing it. Purely baroque has since become the pretension to put such a patchwork in question a distinction before the whole world."[7][8]

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

  1. ^ Who's Who in Latin America: Part III, Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Stanford University Press. 1951. pp. 119–. ISBN 978-0-8047-0726-8. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  2. ^ Rodríguez, Ramón Armando (1957). Diccionario biográfico, geográfico e histórico de Venezuela (in Spanish). Madrid, Spain. p. 53.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ^ "Clotilde C. de Arvelo". League of Nations Search Engine. 11 November 2020.
  4. ^ a b Motor Age. Vol. 26 (Public domain ed.). 1914. pp. 45–.
  5. ^ "Nomination archive – Clotilde de Arvelo". nobelprize.org. 11 November 2020.
  6. ^ Fran Tovar (11 October 2025). "Los dos venezolanos que han ganado y los que han sido nominados al Premio Nobel". Emisora Costa del Sol 93.1 FM (in Spanish). Retrieved 15 October 2025.
  7. ^ a b Svensén, Bo (2001). Nobelpriset i litteratur. Nomineringar och utlåtanden 1901–1950. Svenska Akademien. ISBN 978-91-1-301007-6. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  8. ^ Annelie Babitz (13 October 2009). ""Kvinna, då måste jag lära dig skriva först"". Journalisten (in Swedish). Retrieved 11 November 2020.
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