HUMLEBÆK.- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark is presenting 100 works by the artist Marisol in the first comprehensive survey of her work in Europe. Shooting to fame in the 1960s, Marisol helped shape the experimental New York art scene, especially Pop art.

Born María Sol Escobar in Paris, to Venezuelan parents, Marisol (1930-2016) moved to New York, where she stayed on and off for the rest of her life. This was also where she made her breakthrough in the art world in the early 1960s. Today, she stands as one of the most radical and visionary artists of her generation.

Marisol will be unknown to many Europeans. She is sparsely represented in European collections and has never previously been the subject of a major exhibition in Europe. Thanks to many generous loans, we are finally getting a chance to show Marisol’s expansive and deeply original work. -- Kirsten Degel, curator, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Soon after moving to New York, Marisol became a star on the city’s avant-garde scene. Thousands of people lined up to see her sculptures, whose original approaches and themes set them apart from mainstream Pop art. She made the cover of TIME magazine. In 1968, she represented Venezuela at the Venice Biennale, and she was one of only four women among the 149 artists selected for that year’s Documenta in Kassel, Germany, proof of her influence and recognition.

In the 1970s, as interest in Pop art waned and Marisol’s work became more overtly political, she fell out of favour with critics and commercial interest in her work declined. Shying away from the limelight, she continued working in sculpture while exploring other media like drawing, printmaking and photography. She designed sets and costumes for dance performances by Martha Graham and others, and created public monuments to historical figures, including several in Venezuela. In her late work, Marisol used nearly every medium available to explore the themes that mattered most to her – the experiences of women and immigrants, social injustice and the human relationship to nature.

So much more than a 1960s icon

Marisol was celebrated for her carved and painted wooden sculptures of life-sized human figures. The figures were often combined with found objects and plaster casts of her own body parts in large tableaux mingling Pop, Dada and folk art. Referencing early Mesoamerican and South American cultures, the sculptures confronted the American juggernaut of consumerism and celebrity culture.

As an artist, Marisol is much more than an icon of a decade. In addition to canonical works from the 1960s, the exhibition showcases lesser known aspects of her practice, with a special focus on the artist’s wide-ranging works on paper. With the enigmatic intimacy of her sculptures, Marisol’s drawings and prints expand her investigation of the female body and experience.

Marisol’s works cover practically every aspect of modern life. They are packed with existential issues and powerful political statements about entrenched gender roles and equality. Attacking the clichéd head-on, she often poked loving fun not just at feminine ideals but also at masculine pomposity and fraught family relationships.

Surveying Marisol’s work in all its variety across five decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s, the Louisiana's exhibition provides an unprecedented opportunity to experience her singular contribution to modern art.

Curator: Kirsten Degel

Consultant Curator: Cathleen Chaffee, Charles Balbach Chief Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Exhibition designer: Gudrun Krabbe

The exhibition catalogue is a new issue of Louisiana Revy, in Danish and English, featuring essays by Cathleen Chaffee, Nicole Rudick, David J. Getsy, Delia Solomons and Jacob Holdt.