An Enigmatic Woman: Marisol’s Big Works Get an Even Bigger Retrospective at Dallas Museum of Art

Lindsey Wilson·
Dallas/Ft WorthVisual Art
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Her name was synonymous with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and other iconic Pop artists of the 1960s. But few today remember Marisol Escobar or her ahead-of-its-time art, which provocatively explored femininity and women’s role in society.

Known simply as Marisol—more than a decade before Cher would make mononyms mainstream—the Venezuelan-American sculptor was as intriguing as her large-scale wooden figurines and drawings. Now, North Texans will have the chance to discover both the woman and her work in Marisol: A Retrospective at Dallas Museum of Art, running Feb. 23-July 6, 2025.

“She was so extremely successful in her day but departed from the art-world limelight by her own choice,” says Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, DMA’s senior curator of contemporary art, who assisted originating institution Buffalo AKG Art Museum with building the touring exhibition. DMA is the final stop, following the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Toledo Museum of Art, and Buffalo. At 250 pieces, this is the largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Marisol’s work, thanks largely to her having bequeathed her entire estate to Buffalo AKG Art Museum in 2017.

Born in Paris to aristocratic Venezuelan parents, who regularly traveled and visited museums with her, Marisol seemed primed for a privileged life. But then her mother tragically died by suicide when Marisol was eleven; soon after, her father sent her to boarding school in Long Island, New York. Marisol was so traumatized by her mother’s death that she effectively stopped speaking, and did not speak regularly until she was in her early 20s.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1946, when she was 16, and began her formal art education at the Otis Art Institute and the Jepson Art Institute in Los Angeles. A year studying at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts followed, then a return to New York before a sojourn in Rome.

During this time, Marisol began experimenting with terracotta, bronze, and wood sculptures inspired by Pre-Columbian sculpture and American folk art of the 1950s. When she settled once again in New York in the early 1960s, she struck up a friendship with rising art and advertising star Andy Warhol, who quickly included the striking, dark-eyed Marisol in his early films The Kiss and 13 Most Beautiful Girls.

“It’s hard for us to put her in perspective,” explains Brodbeck. “She was covered in the popular press, not just by the art world. People would line up to see her and her work, she was such a phenomenon. But she was also deliberately mysterious; she said very little, but what she did say had a lot of impact.”

Though grouped with Pop art and artists, Marisol’s work doesn’t fit the public’s perception of the genre.

“It doesn’t look like traditional Pop art, which most people associate with commercial imagery and a slick appearance,” cautions Brodbeck, citing Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Lichtenstein’s primary colors as examples. “Marisol’s work is extremely handmade, using a lot of uncarved wood. It is often oversized, too, to the point of feeling like science-fiction—its size is commentary in itself.”

Marisol commented on traditionally feminine roles and topics like motherhood, family, and playing hostess in her sculptures, and often inserted her views and herself—literally—into the work.

A trio of females strolls with a child and stuffed canine in Women and Dog (1964), but their deadpan expressions (one repeating itself 360 degrees) are unsettling. The figures are literally “boxed in” their stylish clothing, while the taxidermied dog’s head sits atop its prone wooden body.

She skewers fashion and American consumerism with The Party (1965-66), a grouping of about 15 figures “dressed” in found objects that form gloves, shoes, dresses, and jewelry. The figures sport variations of Marisol’s own face and limbs, a practice Brodbeck says turned each of Marisol’s works into a kind of self-portrait.

“My favorite pieces of hers are Baby Boy (1962-63) and Baby Girl (1963),” says Brodbeck. “Each is holding a Barbie-type doll that resembles Marisol, and she used commercial references like Gerber ads for the children’s faces. But the fact that they are so big is commentary on the larger-than-life demands of motherhood, especially for women who tried to balance a career.

“Marisol herself never married or had children—in fact, she spoke openly about having an abortion—but being a wife and mother was so intrinsically linked to womanhood at the time that she had to address it. Marisol’s reference points are so deep and hint at something so human, but are also fanciful and encourage you to look beyond face value.”

—LINDSEY WILSON

Lindsey Wilson

Lindsey Wilson is a Dallas-based arts writer and critic with a journalism master's from Syracuse University and an undying love for chips and salsa. When not at the theater (which is rare), she enjoys reading, playing with her dogs, and traveling. Photo by Jeffrey Hummel.