Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, October 13, 2021: Marina Núñez del Prado, a Bolivian sculptor (#1390)

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Artist of the Day, October 13, 2021: Marina Núñez del Prado, a Bolivian sculptor (#1390)

Marina Núñez del Prado (1910 – 1995) was a celebrated Bolivian sculptor and one of the most respected sculptors from Latin America. Núñez del Prado based many of her sculptures off of the female form as well as taking inspiration from animals and landscapes native to Bolivia. Her work is highly sensuous, with rolling curves. She carved from native Bolivian woods, as well as black granite, alabaster, basalt and white onyx. Perhaps one of her most famous works is "White Venus" (1960), a stylized female body in white onyx. Another celebrated work is "Mother and Child," sculpted in white onyx. Indigenous Bolivian cultures inspired much of her work.

La Paz was the birthplace of Marina Núñez Del Prado. Due to art being imported from Spain, stylistic movements, such as Baroque, found their way into La Paz and were taught in Lake Titicaca School. Later, Mestizo Baroque, Neo-classicism and eventually Rococo began influencing the art and architecture of La Paz. One example of this is the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, which used a combination of Baroque and Neo-classicism. While there was a lot of influence from newer movements like abstraction, around 1956, there was also a growing interest in making folk art and other traditional styles of art.

Marina Núñez Del Prado first discovered her love of art in her youth while studying sculptural modeling techniques in La Paz. Her passion for sculpture was inspired by the work of Michelangelo as well as Miguel Ángel and later went on to study fine art at the Academy of Fine Arts in La Paz, graduating in 1930. Shortly after her graduation, she went on to have her first several exhibition in La Paz. She continued on at her alma mater as an instructor of artistic anatomy and sculpture. She became the first woman to achieve a position as the chair of the Academy.

While she was working at the Academy of Fine Arts, La Paz, Del Prado began exhibiting locally. She was very artistically active, and collaborated with various artists, such as Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas, a Bolivian painter who led the indigenous art movement at that time. Similarly Del Prado primarily focused her work on the rights of indigenous peoples and indigenismo, a political ideology centering the relationship of the indigenous population with the government.

Del Prado left her job at the university and her home city of La Paz to travel in 1938. Some research stats that for the next eight years after her graduation, she specialized in artistic anatomy and won a gold medal from Argentina in 1936 and Berlin in 1938. She spent the next several years traveling through Peru, Uruguay, and Argentina. She then traveled to other countries outside of South America, including Egypt, parts of Europe, and the United States, where she studied for 8 years in New York on a fellowship awarded by the America Association of University Women.

While in New York, she made nude sculptures that were sixty inches tall and went to the Ettl Studios to learn how to cast. She then tried to apply to the American Association of University Women, or AAUW, but was rejected on her first attempt. Her second letter managed to convince Mary H. Smith as it showed her enthusiasm for art and education. Later, she found herself wanting to use her art to bring the world together by spreading information about her heritage as well as bring back what she learned to Bolivia.

Along her successful career she met outstanding artists such as Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncuși, poets Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni and Juana de Ibarbourou. Her work has been the subject of international and national critique. Botelho Gozalvez claims that Nunez del Prado has a “genius loci” and distinguishes four periods in her work. The first period is characterized by the musical thematic of her work. The second period is characterized by the use of bidimensional sculpture and a social thematic. The third period is characterized by the tridimensional stone sculpture. It is also known as the ‘maternal’ period because of her aymara Madonnas and other depictions of indigenous women. Finally, the fourth period is the neo-abstract, which has been influenced by Picasso, Archipenko and Milles. In similar fashion Pedro Querejazu coincides with Herazo Rojas on her race thematic and suggest that her sculptures originated within the movement of ‘native’ realism. According to him, her later her work adopted a modern and international expression which achieved a final stage immersed in the abstractism. This later work focused on the female figure and creatures of the Andes. On this later stage she worked with Amazonian tropical woods, bronze, and stones such as granite, andesite, basalt, onyx and marble. Other critics like Eduardo Mendoza Varela, who reviewed her sculptures exhibition shown in the Luis Angel Arango library at the bank of the Republic of Colombia in Bogota Colombia, argues that her work is ‘miraculous’ and ‘mysterious’. His critique employs poetic metaphors to emphasize her skills and mastery of the materials in her sculptures. He considers the abstracted and reduced forms as possessing the ability to go beyond just physical representation but capture the spirit of the artist herself. The critic Guillermo Nino de Guzman also refers to her work as ‘genius’ and a constant force of creative energy in regards to her series “Mujeres al Viento”. Finally, her work has inspired poetry verses. The Spanish poet Rafael Alberti has dedicated an homage to her work.

In the 1970s Marina Núñez del Prado established her residence and art studio in what would become the Museum Hose, located in 300 Ántero Aspillaga Street, right at the center of the El Olivar Forest. This neocolonial style building was conceived in 1926 by the engineer Luis Alayza and Paz Soldán and raised by the master builder Enrique Rodrigo, being one of the first buildings in the area. It became the first house in the whole of El Olivar to be declared National Cultural Heritage and in 1984 the house-museum of the Núñez del Prado Foundation was officially inaugurated in La Paz in honor of Marina Núñez del Prado's parents.

The House Museum governed by the FOUNDATION NUÑEZ DEL PRADO, is a Private Museum that enriches the Bolivian heritage. For decades it was a home and studio to Marina Nunez del Prado, and now it has become the Casa Museo and a treasured place of history and talent to those of Bolivia. The museum contains 1,014 works by del Prado, which constitute the greater repository of her work including sculptures, drawings and sketches by Marina, thus making it the largest existing collection of her works. But within the museum you will not only find the work of Marina, but also that of her sister Nilda, who was a great goldsmith and painter. The museum is filled with their family environment, works of her father, and the collections of Bolivian Silver, Colonial Art, Contemporary Painting, and Handicrafts.

Her physical legacy is the Museo de Nunez del Prado which was her family home. It now houses over 1000 of her works including drawings and sketches. The museum preserves the work of Nunez del Prado as well as contributions made by her sister who was a gifted goldsmith and painter and her father. Located in the center of the El Olivar Forest, the museum is a National Cultural Heritage site. Admission to the museum is free, but international visitors require personal identification such as a passport. Visits are guided by the curator.

Nunez del Prado’s non-physical legacy far extends beyond the borders of Peru. Her work has significantly impacted the field of sculpture both in Latin America and internationally. Her work has been a great influence in the collective identity of South American art. She has also been a subject in literature like work by the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni, Uruguayan narrator Juana de Ibarbourou and Spanish poet Raphael Alberti. Since 1930 her work has impacted and been the source of admiration in countries such as Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Germany, USA, Brazil, Spain, Italy, France, Cuba and Mexico.

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