Marisol Escobar
Maria Sol " Marisol " Escobar ( Marisol Escobar also as an artist ) ( May 22nd, 1930 in Paris) is an American sculptor, painter and object artist of Venezuelan origin.
Life
Maria Sol Escobar comes from a wealthy Venezuelan family. She is the daughter of Gustavo Escobar and Josefina Hernandez and has a brother, Gustavo. The mother, a patron of the arts in Venezuela, died already in 1941. During the Second World War, the children performed with the father a nomadic existence with alternating stays in Paris, Los Angeles and Caracas. The father supported the children and allowed them a sound education. Marisol studied in 1949 at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux -Arts in Paris. In 1950, she moved to New York, where she studied from 1951-54 at the New School for Social Research, the Art Students League and with Hans Hofmann at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts.
About Hofmann was the beatniks in Greenwich Village and the painters of Abstract Expressionism, whose meeting place was the Künstlerkneipe Cedars Tavern, known. Marisol became friends with Willem de Kooning, among others. Already at that time she worked on pre-Columbian art and artifacts of the indigenous cultures and gave the traditional painting in favor of sculpture at first. Soon first sculptures created in mixed media of wood, plastic and other found objects. In 1958, Marisol her first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli. In 1959, a trip to Italy, where she mainly dealt with the art of the Renaissance.
Back in New York emerged from 1960 groups of figures made of wood. In 1961 she participated in the extensive exhibition The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA ). During the 1960s she became known primarily in the context of the emerging Pop Art and presented together with artists such as Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol from. With Robert Indiana in 1963 she had a brief kiss scene in the Andy Warhol film Kiss. Warhol had met at the Stable Gallery by Eleanor Ward, who also represented Indiana. In 1964 Marisol in a screen test for the Warhol film 13 Most Beautiful Women, the exotic beauty of acting - which occurred now under the name " Marisol " - to rapid popularity and presence in the society columns helped. However, the rather shy artist was not so much interested in the party scene and Superstar cult of Warhol's Factory and other pop protagonists and moved increasingly from the New York art scene back. In the late 1960s she made numerous solo exhibitions in Europe. In 1968 she participated in the documenta 4 in Kassel and at the Venice Biennale. Politically, she was active during the anti-Vietnam war.
In 1968/69 she was selected through a tender process the Hawaii State Statuary Hall Commission from 66 participating artists to design the statue of Father Damien de Veuster and missionary, eventually on April 15, 1969, when Father Damien Day, in front of the Hawaii State Capitol was unveiled. In the early 1970s became the artist in a sense and creative crisis and she distanced herself some years the art market; it was followed by numerous world travel that they prefer the diving devoted himself. It was not until 1981, she returned to New York.
Marisol Escobar moves in different styles of art; their work ranges stylistically from abstract expressionism Hard Edge to Pop Art, with which it is most closely connected. Marisol's sculptural works are strongly influenced by the pre-Columbian art, by primitivism and of Latin American indigenous and folk art and quote on some peculiar satirical religious, cultural and historical subjects, such as the installation Self-Portrait Looking at The Last Supper ( 1982-84 ), the The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci as a cubist figure group satirized. More figurative works such as Women Leaning ( 1965-66 ), consist mostly of wood blocks, in which individual elements such as facial features or hands are worked out and painted detail. In addition to large sculptural works, the artist also works with assemblage techniques, screen printing and lithographs.