Education
Tovar studied painting with the Catalan artist (then based in Caracas) Ángel Cabré i Magriñá alongside her sister, the painter Elvira Elisa Zuloaga, through private classes arranged by their father in 1916. Finding that she preferred sculpture to painting, she began studies in 1936 at the newly reopened and updated Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Aplicadas (School of Fine and Applied Arts) in Caracas. There she studied in the nascent ceramics program directed by João Gonçalves, as well as sculpture under Ernesto Maragall.
Tovar traveled to New York in 1939 to study in a workshop established by sculptor Alexander Archipenko, where she continued her studies in ceramics.