She was born into an intellectual and artistic family, related to painter David Alfaro Siqueiros and educator Justo Sierra.
She did not have extensive formal training but became an art teacher, meeting a number of contemporary Mexican artists, including her husband Gustavo Montoya.
Cordelia Urueta was born on September 16, 1908 in Coyoacán (then separate from Mexico City) into a family of intellectuals, artists, diplomats and filmmakers.
[4] She grew up during the Mexican Revolution and her father was heavily involved in efforts to unite the various factions vying for power after the ouster of Porfirio Díaz, serving in a number of political posts as well as writing.
[3] Reed invited Urueta to participate in a collective exhibition along with José Clemente Orozco and Rufino Tamayo, but after this her health forced her to temporarily retire from painting.
[1] Through the SEP, she began to meet a number of prominent Mexican artists including Leopoldo Méndez, Juan Soriano, Carlos Mérida, María Izquierdo, Francisco Gamboa and Pastor Velázquez .
[5] Shortly before World War II began, the Paris embassy staff was evacuated with Urueta and Montoya transferred to the New York consulate.
From that time until her death, she had a wide circle of intellectual and artist friends which included Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Soriano, Luis Barragán, Xavier Villaurrutia, María Izquierdo, Alfredo Zalce and Daniel Cosío Villegas .
[3][4] She was a painter, teacher, diplomat and art promoter and a founding member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana .
[1][5] From the 1950s to the 1960s, she had numerous showings of her work in Mexico and abroad, including, France, Jerusalem, Scandinavia, Peru, Honduras, Japan and New York.
[1][5] Her best work is considered to be that of the late 1950s and early 1960s, winning biennials such as the Interamericana de Pintura and the VI Bienal in São Paulo, Brazil in 1961.
[1][2] Her artistic development was to strive to find her own style and she succeeded in creating a number of novelties, such as figures that eventually disappeared, ceding importance to textures and color.