Biography:

Marisol Escobar, known simply as Marisol, was born in Paris on May 22, 1930 to Venezuelan parents, and spent her early years in Europe, the United States and Caracas. She studied at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Art Students League, and the New School for Social Research. Marisol’s fame as a sculptor of roughly-carved wood sculptures often arranged in idiosyncratic tableaux began with the Pop Art movement in the 1960s, although her work incorporated a multiplicity of cultural and formal elements and is not easily classified. A close friend of Andy Warhol’s, she often featured in his films from the 1960s.

 

 

In 2014–15 a retrospective and scholarly catalog of Marisol’s sculptures and works on paper (Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee; El Museo del Barrio in New York City) brought her work to the attention of new audiences.

To learn more about Marisol:

Listen to an oral history interview with Marisol here.

Karen Rosenberg reviewed the Museo del Barrio retrospective for The New York Times here.

Sebastian Smee revisits her work in this article for The Boston Globe.

Excellent collection of introductory materials from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Arts can be found here.

 

 

Marisol is represented in Fluid Ecologies by Untitled (1976)

Untitled, 1976. Colored pencil and pastels on black paper. 39 x 27 1/2 in. (99.06 x 69.85 cm). Purchase, Barbara Doyle Duncan, class of 1943, Fund for Contemporary Latin American Drawings. 1977.8

Portrait of Marisol by Arnold Newman (1985). FLAAC Collection.