Cornelia Vargas has developed her visual work in the field of concrete art, experimenting with visual composition around mathematics and colors through variations. She studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, where she took the preliminary course and studied color with professor Helene Nonné-Schmidt, assistant to Paul Klee at the Bauhaus. Max Bill, director of the Ulm school, also a Bauhaus student and principal exponent of concrete art, became the teacher for both Cornelia and Eduardo Vargas. They married in 1958 in Ulm and worked together in Max Bill's studio in Zurich in 1959.

In 1960, they moved to Chile, where Cornelia worked as a designer and architect in the construction of cooperative villas alongside her architect husband in Valparaíso and as a professor of the Environmental Design course at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, and as a Design professor at the Universidad de Chile/Valparaíso. In 1975, they went into exile with their children in Germany. Cornelia performed interior design, textile, photography and painting work, and researched topics such as patterns while raising her 7 children. In 1997, she returned to Valparaíso after the death of her husband and traveled south to teach at the Universidad de Los Lagos as a professor in the Architecture and Design programs and subsequently also at the Universidad de Talca.

In 2014, she exhibited her paintings for the first time in the solo exhibition "Experimentos concretos" at the Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, continuing with an exhibition in the year 2015 at the Museo de Bellas Artes within the framework of the 12th Bienal de Artes Mediales. In 2017, she participated with works in the collective show "La Revolución de las Formas: 60 años de arte abstracto en Chile" held at the Centro Cultural Palacio de la Moneda. In 2019, she participated with the exhibition "Cien es un color" in the 14th Bienal de Artes Mediales. In 2022, she held the solo exhibition "Mensajes" at the Galería Patricia Ready in Santiago. In 2024, she participated in the SAL Chiloe (XVIII Seminario de Arquitectura Latinoamericana) and with the exhibition "Iteración" at the MAM Chiloe in the context of the Muestra Regional de Arte Contemporáneo 2024. Currently, she is working on new projects in her studio.