Marisol Escobar Overview

This unusual sculptor/painter achieved an authentically individualistic style by channeling her talents through the art of assemblage, a form of integrated mixed media. Her work is largely inspired by the earthy representations of people and animals from pre-Columbian sculpture and South... [more]

This unusual sculptor/painter achieved an authentically individualistic style by channeling her talents through the art of assemblage, a form of integrated mixed media. Her work is largely inspired by the earthy representations of people and animals from pre-Columbian sculpture and South American folk art. Many have commented that if her carved wood animals and totemic figures were found alongside ancient work in the South American jungle, it would be difficult to tell the difference. Her abstract terra cottas and constructions in welded metal also project a certain irreverent authenticity. One of her more famous pieces is the mahogany-carved portrait, "The Family," an eighty-three-inch-tall construction in wood and mixed media of a Dust Bowl-era farm family nailed together against boards. Her art is characterized by whimsical paint application and the humorous placement of found objects like the staring doll's eyes set in the skull of her carved two-foot tall cat. Another piece, "The Generals" shows George Washington and Simon Bolivar astride a barrel-bodied horse on four wheels, with a built-in transistorized phonograph supplying martial tunes. Escobar uses self-portraiture in a cheeky, Pop-art-mocking manner: the piece "Tete-a-Tete" shows three images of the artist seated at a table from which rises a hand (presumably the artist's) clutching a fork. In "The Wedding," figures of Escobar serve as both the elegant bride and the equally resplendent groom, whose top hat is decorated with a photograph of the artist. Finally, ambiguous, overgrown children hold dainty dolls with Escobar's face. One art critic observed that "her art is that of the toy-maker, whose creations are specifically designed to appeal to that part of the mind in which fantasy and reality seem identical." [show less]