Francisca Alemán, known as Panchita Alemán, spent her entire working life as a dressmaker in the city of Santa Clara. At the request of José Seoane, she took up painting in the 1960s at the same time as her sister, Isabel Alemán Corrales, and later joined the Group Pintores y Dibujantes Populares de Las Villas.

Her works depict fantastic and disturbing forms of animal life. Some of her creatures are recognisable and others are not, but they are all invested with a sense of strangeness. She focuses particular attention on the eyes and mouth, making them the most highly expressive aspects of her creatures. Her figures are also set among equally original landscapes and vegetation. The content of Panchita Alemán’s work has many similarities with that of her sister, Isabel: both portray a fantastical world and nature in which the eyes play an important role. However, she depicts a broader variety of subjects – fish, birds, land animals, monsters and more – to which she gives the impression of volume, and for which she uses India ink, sometimes emphasised with ballpoint pen.