L'Officiel Art

Pop Artist and Frequent Andy Warhol Collaborator Marisol Comes to Miami in New Exhibition

The Pérez Art Museum Miami's new exhibition reexamines the forgotten legacy of Venezuelan sculptor Marisol Sol Escobar, a leading female artist of the Pop art movement and friend of Andy Warhol.

Marisol Sol Escobar sitting in her studio on a small wooden stool. She is surrounded by various sculptures as well as paint cans and wooden barrels. She is wearing a turtleneck sweather, black pants and black boots. She has chin-length black hair, and the picture is in black and white.
Marisol in her studio, 1963. Photograph by Ben Martin.

Venezuelan sculptor Marisol Sol Escobar had a clear influence on Andy Warhol’s early work, and yet her rightful place in the Pop art pantheon has never been fully noted or celebrated. An upcoming exhibition at the  Pérez Art Museum Miami endeavors to change that, documenting their friendship and its lasting effects. Opening April 15 and on view through September 5, Marisol and Warhol Take New York looks at the dawn of Pop art in the early 1960s and juxtaposes Marisol’s work with Warhol’s. “Marisol’s work has been interpreted as and included in international Pop exhibitions for many years, but this exhibition [shows her to be] a Pop artist who was part of the New York Pop origin story,” says PAMM’s Maritza Lacayo, who organized the exhibition alongside Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Andy Warhol Museum Jessica Beck. “Marisol was a central protagonist in this explosive moment in American art, and her impact and influence deserve greater attention. The exhibition provides a new way to look at the history and at the two artists’ friendship, where Marisol and Warhol stand together as icons of Pop.” Marisol’s clever sculptures often showcased carved wooden figures embellished with drawings, fabric, and found objects, and sometimes featured famous figures like U.S. Presidents, movie stars, and foreign royalty.

A pop art portrait of Andy Warhol is green, blue, dark green and red. Andy's left side of his face and the canvas are red, the left side of his face is green and blue, and the majority of the background color is a light grey.
”Self-Portrait,” 1966-67, by Andy Warhol.

The elegant and enigmatic Marisol, who died in 2016, was born in Paris and became a fixture in the downtown New York City gallery scene of the 1950s and ‘60s alongside friends like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Her work was shown in exhibitions at New York institutions like the Sidney Janis, Leo Castelli (with Johns and Rauschenberg), the Stable Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art’s 1961 The Art of Assemblage. Marisol also represented Venezuela at the Venice Biennale in 1968 and was one of only four women among the 150 artists in that year’s Documenta in Germany. She studied under abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann and also illustrated several Time Magazine covers. Marisol and Warhol met in 1962. “Warhol was impressed with her, that she was a well-known and established artist,” says Lacayo. “Warhol described Marisol as ‘glamorous,’ which was, for Warhol, the pinnacle of success.” 

A picture of a box of Brillo soap pads. The box is white and the writing is in red and blue. The box sits on a white background.
A painting of a cow from the neck up in pink paint. The cow is painted on a yellow background.
A painting of three Coca-Cola glass bottles in light green and black paint. Underneath the Coca-Cola logo is written in red paint.
A pop art portrait of a woman in the colors black, pink, blue, red, and grey. The background is grey, the woman's hair is chin-length and black, her face is pink, her lips are red and she has blue eyeshadow.
Clockwise from top left: ”Brillo Soap Pads Box,” 1964; “Cow,” 1966; “Silver Liz [Ferus Type],” 1963; “Three Coke Bottles,” 1962, by Andy Warhol.

Iconic Pop subjects like Coca-Cola and the Kennedy family are featured in the work of both artists. Warhol’s “Green Coca-Cola Bottles” (1962) painting and Marisol’s “Love” (1962) sculpture both employ Coca-Cola bottles, while Marisol’s 1964 sculpture “The Kennedy Family” and Warhol’s “Nine Jackies” of the same year feature First Lady Jackie Kennedy across different mediums. “Her sculptures are quintessentially Pop, but some also reference her family life, include self-portraits, and give us an insight into her cherished memories,” says Lacayo. “She worked with found objects to create some of her sculptures—using tables, chairs, and shoes to create some of her works. She created work that was both striking and intensely personal—giving the viewer the opportunity to get to know her.” Also interspersed throughout the exhibition are Warhol’s silent films, produced in 1963 and 1964, which show a more personal side of Marisol. “The Kiss” (1963) and “13 Most Beautiful Women” (1964) are two such examples. “She is the subject of numerous early Warhol films, some of which are on view in the exhibition, and they provide insight into her personality and her friendship with Warhol,” says Lacayo. “She was a close collaborator and someone who influenced Warhol’s practice.”

A sculpture of a family made out of different materials. There is three children and two parents, and each person is made in a box-like format.
”The Family,” 1963.

The exhibition seeks to connect the dots on these two artists and their friendship. “They might seem like an odd pairing on the surface, but given their experiences within the art world, their friendship made perfect sense,” says Lacayo. “Both artists experienced feeling like outsiders—Marisol being a woman who was constantly being asked to fit within a certain traditional mold, and Warhol as someone who wasn’t always regarded as a serious artist. It took Warhol nearly a decade to receive any attention from the New York art scene. Marisol, on the other hand, was already well known and respected by the time Warhol began making a name for himself as an artist.”

So why aren’t Marisol and her body of work front and center in the Pop art lexicon? And, if not Pop, was her work considered folk art? "Marisol has been excluded from the mainstream Pop narrative," explains Lacayo. "The exhibition provides an opportunity for [Marisol and Warhol’s] works to come together in dialogue and for the viewer to redefine Pop for themselves." So much of Marisol’s work was about femininity and self-exploration; yet, that femininity is perhaps why she was left out of the conversation. "Her work was very much about how she encountered and interacted with the outside world while also referencing her internal struggles, memories, experiences, and opinions," explains Lacayo. "It could be argued that Marisol being pushed out of the New York Pop narrative had something to do with the fact that she was a woman—it wouldn’t be the first time a woman was excluded from an important art historical moment."

A sculpture of a box where a man is drawn onto two sides so it looks as though the man is 3-D. He is wearing a white shirt, black pants and black shoes.
wood chair furniture plywood clothing apparel art
Left: ”Andy,” 1962-63; Right: “Dinner Date,” 1963.

The exhibition traces the evolution and influence of Marisol’s work through the Pop art movement and discusses where she best fits in in an art historical context. “We are drawn to Marisol’s embrace of high and low in a conceptual way, which eventually led her to Pop art,” says PAMM director Franklin Sirmans. “With her family she was exposed to pre-Columbian art and South American folk art, which gives her brand of pop art an embrace of the handmade as much as the mass-market mechanical signs and symbols of advertising that are so prevalent in Warhol’s art.” This makes Miami the perfect place to showcase Marisol’s work, set in the context of Warhol. “With our geographic proximity to South America and the Caribbean and constant conversation and exploration of histories of colonialism in the region, it’s fascinating to see the work of an artist like Marisol through that lens,” says Sirmans. Now that the artist is finally getting her due, it should last longer than 15 minutes.

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