Marisol Escobar
Marisol Escobar, referred to solely as ‘Marisol’ starting in the 1960s, is a sculptor and printmaker whose work focuses on the consideration of women in modern society. The artist was inspired by Mexican, pre-Columbian, and American folk art, seeking to transform seemingly primitive constructions of found objects into highly personal assemblages. In the 1970s, her lithographs, etchings, and sculptures rendered the tropes of femininity and injustices women faced with desperation, shedding light upon the constrained housewife and her desire to transcend her role amid the mutating family dynamics of the era. Her most famous figurines and installations made of materials including carved wood and stone, bronze, terra-cotta, found clothing, and reclaimed televisions, among other things, began to target contemporary artists and personalities in the 1970s and 1980s. She created towering likeness of Hugh Hefner, the Kennedys, and Lyndon B. Johnson, manipulating scale and proportion to render their notorious personalities. Marisol often integrated her self-portrait or casts of her body parts into artworks, implanting the artist’s hand in a moment where many were seeking to ignore it by way of industrial materials and references to commercialism.
Marisol’s work has been exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, New York, Memphis Brooks Museum …
Marisol Escobar, referred to solely as ‘Marisol’ starting in the 1960s, is a sculptor and printmaker whose work focuses on the consideration of women in modern society. The artist was inspired by Mexican, pre-Columbian, and American folk art, seeking to transform seemingly primitive constructions of found objects into highly personal assemblages. In the 1970s, her lithographs, etchings, and sculptures rendered the tropes of femininity and injustices women faced with desperation, shedding light upon the constrained housewife and her desire to transcend her role amid the mutating family dynamics of the era. Her most famous figurines and installations made of materials including carved wood and stone, bronze, terra-cotta, found clothing, and reclaimed televisions, among other things, began to target contemporary artists and personalities in the 1970s and 1980s. She created towering likeness of Hugh Hefner, the Kennedys, and Lyndon B. Johnson, manipulating scale and proportion to render their notorious personalities. Marisol often integrated her self-portrait or casts of her body parts into artworks, implanting the artist’s hand in a moment where many were seeking to ignore it by way of industrial materials and references to commercialism.
Marisol’s work has been exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, New York, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York, Museum of Modern Art Shiga, Japan, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, among many others. She was commissioned for several pieces in Lincoln Center, New York, and designed a stage set for Martha Graham in 1992. She has been awarded the National Arts Club Medal of Honor (1995) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award (1978), among several others. She represented Venezuela at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968.
