Artist of the day: Artist of the day, April 10 (Women in the arts week): Marisol Escobar, French sculptor of Venezuelan heritage (#663)

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Artist of the day, April 10 (Women in the arts week): Marisol Escobar, French sculptor of Venezuelan heritage (#663)

Marisol Escobar (1930 – 2016), otherwise known simply as Marisol, was a French sculptor of Venezuelan heritage who worked in New York City

Her education consisted of study at Jepson Art Institute, École des Beaux-Arts, the Art Students League of New York. The pop art culture in the 1960s found Marisol as one of its members, enhancing her recognition and popularity. Marisol concentrates her work on three dimensional portraits, using inspiration “found in photographs or gleaned from personal memories”

Marisol’s religious beliefs might very well have had a great deal of influence upon her tendencies toward and character for the arts. During her life Marisol's mother (Josefina Escobar) was a well known patron of the arts in Venezuela. Marisol studied in Paris, France in 1949, returning to study in New York in 1950.

It was in 1951, when Marisol discovered Pre-Columbian artifacts that she decided to give up painting and attend her focus to sculpture. Marisol’s inclination led her to work with terracotta and wood. She remained primarily self-taught, though having one clay course in a New York institution. Marisol’s first exhibition was in The Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1958 and it met with success. However, Marisol found herself plagued with self-doubt and ventured to analyze herself and her work as she moved abroad. She successfully freed her doubts and honed her skills. Moving back to New York, she found a tremendous amount of success, culminating in her work finding home in a number of prestigious museums. Marisol sought to envelop herself in the area of abstract expressionism.

It was in the following decade of the 1960s that Marisol began to be influenced by pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. One of her best-known works from this period is The Party, a life-size group installation of figures. All the figures, gathered together in various guises of the social elite, sported Marisol’s face. It is intriguing to note that Marisol dropped her family surname of Escobar in order to divest herself of a patrilineal identity and to "stand out from the crowd."

Marisol drifted through many movements, though her style has always been unique. “‘Not Pop, Not Op, It’s Marisol!’ was the way Grace Glueck titled her article in the New York Times in 1965…”. Silence has been an integral part of Marisol’s work and life. She speaks no more than she must and in her work she is said to give silence, “form and weight”.

Marisol’s diversity, unique eye and character set her apart from any one school of thought. She has often included portraits of public figures, family members and friends in her sculpture.

Marisol has received prestige and honor for her talent and unique voice and has had the opportunity to influence, fascinate and speak to viewers. She reflects her own reality and simply is who she is. She claims, “I was born an artist. Afterwards, I had to explain to everyone just what that meant”. Marisol maintains an outward diffidence, foiling her inner stability. It is her eye for the detail, her definite perception, her clear sense of self and world that spools her creativity and gives birth to her creations.

She has received awards including the 1997 Premio Gabriela Mistral from the Organization of American States for her contribution to Inter-American culture. She was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1978.

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