Rosa Acle was born in Rio de Janeiro to a Lebanese family that moved to Uruguay when she was a child. In 1936 she trained with Joaquín Torres García (1874–1949) and became a member of the Asociación Arte Constructivo [Constructive art association]. Her “Profesión de fe” [Profession of faith], an article in the Association’s review Círculo y cuadrado [Circle and square,1936], revealed, early on, her profound fascination with the universal principles of Constructivist art. Attracted by Middle Eastern mysticism, in 1938 she illustrated an anthology called Voces de oriente. Trozos de literatura árabe [Eastern voices – Selected Arabic literature], translated and annotated by Laila Neffa, which included poems by Khalil Gibran.

Norte [North, 1938], one of her best-known works of this period, is a Constructivist version of an upside-down map by J. Torres García and an exploration of totemic forms with references to Indigenousness and various Eastern as well as Western religions.

She went to Europe in 1941, stopping in France, Switzerland and Italy. After that she travelled to Egypt and south-east Asia, ending up in Australia, where she lived for six years. In 1947 she returned to Montevideo, where she studied yoga, which she had become acquainted with during her travels. For the next more than 30 years she dedicated herself to teaching in Uruguay.

Her Composición (1947) is notable for its asymmetrical outlines and the density of the characters that inhabit an imaginary city. The composition is centred on a pregnant women surrounded by various mythical figures scurrying between streets and homes in what seems to be Montevideo in the mid-20th century. Sin título [Untitled, 1954] is an ink on paper piece whose visual texture brings to mind textiles.  Using golden tints and black lines, R. Acle stayed faithful to the Constructivist tradition, superimposing images and architectonic levels, but in this case showing us a different scene, a church interior, manifesting her incessant spiritual quest.

After a fallow period during the 1970s, her late return to producing art encompassed new themes such as the tree of life and naturalistic representations of animals. In this period she used varied techniques – tempera, ink and oils, on cardboard, paper, wood and fibre panels, for example in El árbol de la vida [The tree of life, 1989]. She worked intensely until her death in 1990 while preparing an exhibition for the Galería Latina in Montevideo, which appeared posthumously in 1994.

Her work during her years in Australia has attracted the interest of artists in that country, such as A.D.S. Donaldson (1961–), who included a photo of her in the series Know My Name 2 (2022), a tribute to women artists that paralleled the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2020–2022). Her work has been acquired by the Davis Museum of Wellesley College in the USA, the Joaquín Ragni collection in Montevideo and many private collections.