Eduardo Abela was born in San Antonio de los Banos, Havana province in 1889. After graduating from the Academy of San Alejandro in 1921, he pursued further study in Madrid until 1924 when he relocated in Paris until 1929.

During the 1930s he was a cartoonist, art administrator, cultural attache for the Cuban government and an arts administrator. His early career was characterized by an unusual expressionism that incorporated Afro-Cuban themes from popular culture. Art Historian Juan A. Martinez, the expert on the artist, has also identified a second phase in the artistic career of Abela in the late 1930s and characterized by larger naturalistic paintings of the Cuban countryside. In the 1950s Martinez identifies a third development ...