Marisol: The Surreal Side of Pop
by Laura Heyrman
This week’s Viewing Room features works by Marisol (Venezuelan-American, 1930-2016), who was internationally famous in the 1960s. After a period of obscurity, her art historical profile has been raised by retrospectives and exhibitions over the last two decades.
“Throughout my life I have learned to be patient, to whisper, not to scream, to look beyond a square, to flow with the sea, to breathe the wind, and to be proud to be an artist.” – Marisol
Maria Sol Escobar was born in Paris to wealthy Venezuelan parents. She adopted her childhood nickname, Marisol, as her full name during her career, dropping her surname to separate herself from patrilineal naming traditions, but also to set herself apart from other artists. When she was a child, her family traveled between Europe, the United States and South America, a pleasant childhood that came to a painful end when her mother committed suicide when Marisol was 11. Traumatized by this event, the child took refuge in silence, declining to talk except when absolutely necessary in school. In her teens, she extended her penitential behavior by walking on her knees, sometimes until they bled. Only in her 20s did the artist begin to speak regularly again, but throughout her life she preferred silence, wishing her art to speak for her and for itself. In addition to the sculptures for which she is best known, Marisol produced paintings, drawings, photographs, set and costume designs, and prints over the course of her career.
Success came relatively quickly for Marisol, whose work was praised by critics when it appeared in a 1957 group show alongside young New York artists like Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925-2008) and Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930). In fact, shortly after that group show, Marisol was given a solo exhibition at the prominent Leo Castelli Gallery, before those colleagues had exhibitions of their own. During this early phase of her career, Marisol was part of the bohemian party scene in New York during the late 50s and early 60s. She was nicknamed the “Latin Garbo” due to her habit of silence and stillness.
“They thought I was cute and spooky, but they didn't take my art so seriously.” – Marisol
Marisol became associated with the Pop Art movement which was just beginning at the time and in the early 60s, she became close friends with Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987). Marisol depicted Warhol in a portrait sculpture (included below) and he cast her in several of his early experimental films. Marisol had already attained the kind of fame and attention that Warhol was seeking when they met and through their close association, he learned from Marisol how to create an artistic persona. Her works were pictured in prominent newspapers and magazines, and even appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Because she was physically attractive, pictures of her with her blocky sculptures were popular. Her 1966 exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery attracted crowds that stretched out the door and around the block, reportedly the largest crowd ever at the gallery. In 1968, the artist represented Venezuela at the Venice Biennale and was one of only 4 women artists show at documenta the same year.
“In the beginning, I drew on a piece of wood because I was going to carve it, and then I noticed that I didn’t have to carve it, because it looked as if it was carved already.” – Marisol
Marisol’s best known works are her sculptures, often assembled from blocky pieces of wood embellished with drawing, painting, photographs, and found objects. Such objects often inspired the works themselves; examples in this slide show are La Visita (The Visit), inspired by a found sofa, and Baby Girl, inspired by a pair of found photographs, along with the related work Baby Boy (1962-1963, Collection of Susan G. and Richard M. Rieser, Jr., Palm Beach, Florida LINK). In her works, the artist copied, cropped, repeated, enlarged, and reframed the materials she took from the culture which surrounded her, disconnecting them from easy understanding of their purpose and meaning. Theatrical and satirical, Marisol’s sculptures are at once humorous and unsettling.
Though initially identified as Pop Art, Marisol’s works are quite difficult to categorize. Early in her career she was deeply impressed by Pre-Colombian sculpture, reflected in some of her bulky shapes. The artist’s sculptures have strong visual ties to American Folk Art, most noticeable in works like The Car, in this slide show, and John Wayne (1963, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College LINK). Some of the artist’s chunky and repetitious forms call to mind Cubist fracturing of reality. The strange combinations of materials and images that the artist employed are strongly reminiscent of Surrealism, as they suggest the blending of conscious and subconscious realities that was the basis of Surrealist philosophy. In Women and Dog, included in this slide show, all of the human figures bear variations on the artist’s face: looking three ways on the left, as a tiny photograph on a much larger head on the center adult, looking in every direction on the next adult, and as a child on the right. The artist explored her own identity and different facets of her personality and life experience, creating the surrealité, or absolute reality, sought by many Surrealists.
“A work of art is like a dream where all the characters, no matter in what disguise, are part of the dreamer.” – Marisol
Many adherents of Pop deplored Marisol’s lack of detachment, a characteristic many consider essential to the definition of the movement. The artist wanted to critique society, especially the traditional social and gender roles of the 1950s. By depicting ideas of “femininity” in these apparently makeshift assemblages, Marisol challenges the social construct of “woman” and expresses the idea that femininity is a constructed identity that can be put together, and taken apart, using stereotypical details. By including her own image in her works, the artist was critiquing her own participation in cultural traditions, but also identified herself as a victim of the societal judgments she was criticizing with her works.
In the early 1970s, Marisol traveled to Tahiti and learned to scuba dive. Long fascinated by the animal world, she was entranced by the peace and beauty she discovered underwater. The artist was inspired to create works which appeared quite different from her earlier blocky and rough sculptures. The Fishman, part of this slide show, comes from this phase of her career. These works were more finished with highly polished surfaces. Blending human and animal, fish and birds like the small figure in The Fishman, were given human faces while the humanoid figure has a fish face. Later projects included memorials and monuments, numerous drawings and watercolors, and sculptures representing artists Marisol admired or their works. An example is Self-Portrait Looking at The Last Supper, included in this slide show, in which the artist returned to her block-like figures but also precisely reproduced the setting and scale of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous mural.
Marisol began to develop memory loss in 2006 which progressed to Alzheimer’s disease; she died of pneumonia at the age of 85, in 2016. The artist bequeathed a large body of work and archival material to Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which had been the first institution to collect her work in 1962. Marisol was a firm believer in the importance of public art museums, from which she had learned and found inspiration from childhood on.
During the end of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st, Marisol was largely excluded from the art history of her period. There were several reasons for this. Like other women artists of the time, she was often relegated to the background, even as her former Pop colleagues were celebrated. She was sometimes pigeon-holed as a “wise primitive” due to references to Pre-Colombian and Folk Art within her works. Some feminist observers failed to recognize the artist’s intentions and interpreted her works as celebrations of the tropes of femininity she was critiquing. The tide began to turn in 2014, when the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art organized a well-received retrospective, which then traveled to Museo del Barrio in New York. The current retrospective at the Dallas Museum of Art was organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and appeared previously at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Toledo Museum of Art, and Buffalo. Another survey of the artist’s career, the first in Europe, will open at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in October. These exhibitions are recognition of Marisol’s importance as a representative of her time and a forerunner of many artistic concerns of today.
“I’ve always wanted to be free in my life and art. It’s as important to me as truth.” – Marisol
Exhibitions:
Marisol: A Retrospective, Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 North Harwood, Dallas, Texas, USA. Through July 6, 2025. LINK: dma.org/art/exhibitions/marisol-retrospective
Marisol. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Gl. Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebaek (north of Copenhagen), Denmark. October 1, 2025 to February 22, 2026. LINK: louisiana.dk/en/exhibition/marisol
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