Marisol Escobar Women and Dog, Witney Museum 

“Totem girls” by Beatrice Brandini

Central protagonist of the American Pop Art movement, Marisol Escobar was a great artist, whose ironic, acute and beautiful sculptures represent a decidedly modern idea of femininity even for the Sixties.

Marisol Escobar Dinner Date in the exhibition Marisol and Warhol Take New York, Pérez Art Museum Miami

Her art, a little surrealist and dadaist, is actually much deeper than it seems to appear. Her women are not label-able, she makes them with wood, plaster, drawings, photos and everything she finds, assembling materials to tell us that there is no single female model as the canons of the time would like. For this reason, to outline feminine images, you use purely masculine techniques, such as carpentry.

   

Marisol Escobar, The Party 

Woman is not only mother, wife, object of desire, woman is all this and much more. In the sculptures Women and Dog, for example, three women, a little girl and a dog are presented as if they were mannequins, ready to behave in a civilized and polite way, as society wants them to be. But they stare at you from every angle…

Born in France to Venezuelan parents, she studied in Paris before moving to New York in 1950, traumatized by her mother’s suicide when she was only eleven, she will spend moments of great solitude and silence, such as when, at the height of her popularity, escapes to Asia and Haiti for five years. However, she continues to work until the end of her life, while stepping out of the spotlight.

“Silence became such a habit that I really had nothing to say to anyone.”

Marisol Escobar, Dinner Date, 1963

Neglected by critics and also by women, the feminists, of whom she wanted to be, if not spokesperson, at least a symbol, Marisol Escobar used humor and intelligence to disturb.

Marisol and Warhol in front of the Empire State Building

In recent years she has returned to the fore, above all with her exhibition at the Pérez Museum in Miami, which has given her back, in part, the weight she deserves, above all alongside the figure of Andy Warhol, of whom she was a friend, inspirer, accomplice of her. Critics say Escobar was an important influence on the work of Andy Warhol. Two similar souls, two geniuses, sometimes misunderstood, two outsiders of art and life.

Marisol Escobar Women Leaning

Different from the most well-known Pop Art characters, such as Lichtenstein, Stella and Warhol, Escobar’s works represent life, modernity, through parody and humor.

A beautiful image of Marisol Escobar

Marisol Escobar has also collected many successes, her pieces, a mixture of pop culture, folk and pre-Columbian influences, have been featured in the best galleries in New York. But unfortunately, as for many women (think of the story of Artemisia Gentileschi), the history of art is predominantly male, imposing oneself and resisting over time is the stuff of superheroes (heroines).

Mood “POP” by Beatrice Brandini

Good life to everyone!

Beatrice