Organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, this major touring exhibition is the most comprehensive survey ever devoted to the groundbreaking artist Marisol (1930-2016).

Marisol was born in Paris to Venezuelan parents and spent her youth between Caracas, New York and Los Angeles. She attended the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before settling in New York in the early 1950s, studying with Hans Hofmann and developing her interest in sculpture. Her early work is strongly influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting and the Pre-Columbian art she discovered on exhibition in New York and on travels to Mexico. Her striking life-size totemic figures consist of mixed-media assemblages combining wood with drawing, painting and found objects in a style that is sometimes quizzical or satirical. Many of them depict the role of women in society.

Marisol became famous, not only for her edgy works, but also for the place she occupied in New York’s art scene. There, she met Andy Warhol, who would include her in several of his films. In 1968, she represented Venezuela at the Venice Biennale and was one of only four women among the 149 artists selected for that year’s Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Marisol continued her sculpture practice while exploring other media, such as drawing, printmaking, and photography. She also designed sets and costumes for dance companies, and she would eventually create public monuments to historical figures around the world.

In addition to Marisol’s canonical works from the 1960s and 1970s and later projects, this retrospective exhibition includes examples of the artist’s source materials, sketches, studies, and personal photographs to further illuminate her working methods, life and times. Moreover, an extensive installation of the artist’s figurative drawings from the 1970s points to the relationship between her sculptural self-portraits and these almost confessional works, suggesting new biographical as well as feminist approaches to Marisol’s positioning and self-presentation.

More information on the event can be found here.