MMFA 2023: Marisol

MARISOL: A RETROSPECTIVE

The world premiere

October 7, 2023 - January 21, 2024

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in collaboration with the Buffalo AKG Art Museum is presenting an exhibition  devoted to Marisol (Venezuelan and American, born in France, 1930–2016). This exhibition is drawn largely on the collection of artworks Marisol kept in her personal possession and left to the Buffalo AKG upon her death. This generous and transformative bequest offers a comprehensive survey of her vast artistic career that span over nearly sixty years.

Although her unique sculptures were associated with the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and she had been defined as the female artist of her generation, Marisol's work remains little known today. By examining and contextualizing her work over her long artistic career, this retrospective offers an opportunity to appreciate a full artistic significance and complexity of this iconic artist. It brings together more than 250 works and documents attesting to the richness of Marisol's unique artistic journey over the decades.

Organized chronologically and thematically, the exhibition begins with Marisol’s emergence as an artist in the 1950s and her early work in sculpture along with a number of previously unpublished drawings. The retrospective then sheds light on her work from the 1960s, when her totemic portraits associated with Pop Art established her as a major artistic figure of her generation.

She uses self-portraiture by incorporating casts of her face, mouth, hands and other body parts into her sculptures. The iconic works from this period include her masterpiece The Party (1965-1966), an assemblage of 15 life-size, free-standing figures, all bearing Marisol’s facial features. Also on display are Baby Girl (1963) and Baby Boy (1962-1963), two sculptures that addressed Cold War concerns as well as femininity and motherhood.

From the 1970s on, the artist’s work is marked by her commitment to issues such as environmental precocity, social justice, feminism and war. While Marisol’s work may not have found wide critical success at the time, it still speaks to several of the most pressing issues of today.

The artist’s figurative drawings from the 1970s point to the relationship to her sculptural self-portraits, suggesting new biographical as well as feminist approaches to Marisol’s self positioning and self presentation. Other sections of the exhibition present documentation of costumes and sets designed by Marisol for some of the leading dance companies of the late 20th century, including the Louis Falco Dance Company and the Martha Graham Dance Company.

In addition to drawing extensively on the Buffalo AKG’s collection of works by Marisol, personally bequeathed to the museum upon her death, the retrospective also features loans of major works such institutions like Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

After its presentation in Montreal, Marisol: A Retrospective will travel to the Toledo Museum of Art (March to June 2024), the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (July 2024 to January 2025), and the Dallas Museum of Art (February to July 2025).

Marisol: A Retrospective iexhibition s organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and curated by Cathleen Chaffee, Charles Balbach Chief Curator. Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA, is the curator of the Montreal presentation, in collaboration with Alexandrine Théorêt, Assistant Curator of International Modern and Contemporary Art of the MMFA.

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All photos @ Nadia Slejskova

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Visit the the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website to check on the opening hours and to purchase your ticket online.