SOLEDAD PENALTA (Noia, A Coruña, 1943). "Torch. Iron. Unique piece. Signed. Measurements: 194 cm (height). Sculptural piece with flaming top, emulating a torch. Soledad Penalta is a Galician sculptor with a wide exhibition and training career. These include from the School of artistic trades of A Coruña, which she completed until 1980 with ceramic sculpture workshops, majolica and stoneware in Barcelona, Girona, Sargadelos (Lugo) or Alicante, and courses in the following decade in the castle of Soutomaior/Pontevedra, and Faenza/Italy, with Emidio Galasi. In his plastic path, learning is a motto, until he finds his most personal expression, passing through polychrome ceramics of notable dimensions on metallic frames, with which he obtains his first prizes. It is his expression always conceptual, to show, already with iron and steel cut-ten, realistic allusions in both monumental sculpture and medium-sized, from the first exhibitions in Noia, 1981, and those that followed in A Coruña, Ateneo de Ourense, and Ferrol. The family move to Minnesota / USA, in the years 1989-1991 was a decisive change, working in the Studio Art of the University with Wayne Potratz, Nick Legeros, Roger Junk and Andy Richars, returning the following year with a scholarship for further training. With ceramics as an exhausted avenue, she focuses on iron as the preferred plastic element, a material with which she has defined her character, making the guild respect her. The Guardians of the sculpture park of the Tower of Hercules (A Coruña), and the work of Praia Ladeira, Baiona, both in steel cor-ten speak, steel that bends or extends sufficiently to show suggestive iconic forms, as shown in Malaga, A Coruña, Vigo, in the itinerant exhibition of the CaixaGalicia Foundation through the Galician capitals, the collective exhibitions in Minnesota and the tributes (Fernando Mon, Laureano Álvarez) and Awards (Isaac Díz Pardo), participating with a monumental work in "Galicia Terra Única", A Coruña, 1997.