Felipe Jesus Consalvos was born near Havana and grew up on the family farm. Married, he first moved to Miami around 1920, then settled in Brooklyn and finally in Philadelphia. He worked for much of his life in a cigar manufacturing factory. His work was discovered in 1983 during the sale of a garage in Philadelphia. The body of work includes more than 800 paper collages, various objects, musical instruments, and more. Consalvos used newspaper clippings and the images decorating cigar boxes to tell stories that were often politically subversive toward the Founding Fathers of America, or to depict fantastical scenes.