Scarce Art Card - Marisol - Women and Dog 1964 (Hand Signed and Dated), 1977

Scarce Art Card - Marisol - Women and Dog 1964 (Hand Signed and Dated), 1977

Artist: Marisol Escobar (known mononymously as Marisol)
Offset lithograph postcard
Published by the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1964
Hand signed and dated 1977 by Marisol in ink on the front
Provenance: Collection of noted autograph collector Tom Grafton
A vintage 1964 postcard issued by the Whitney Museum of American Art (the Whitney Breuer) depicting the iconic "Women and Dog" sculpture by renowned Venezuelan American PopArtist Marisol. This is one of the artist's most recognizable early works and a defining example of her psychologically charged figuration of the 1960s. (The work is considered a self-portrait, or, rather, a multi-self portrait)
This sculpture was recently featured in the Whitney's critically acclaimed exhibition "Sixties Surreal" (at the New Whitney, Meatacking district) where it played a key role in reframing Marisol's work within the broader context of American Surrealism and postwar figuraton. In the exhibition, Women and Dog stood out for its uncanny grotesqueness and theatrical presence - qualities that place Marisol in dialogue with both Pop and Surrealist traditions, while remaining distinctly her own.
The postcard is hand signed and dated "Marisol 1977" in ink, transforming this modest vintage exhibition collectible into a rare and intimate artist-signed object. While postcards were widely produced, signed examples of this subject- particularly tied to a major institutional presentation with such fine provenance, and now reinforced by recent curatorial attention, are uncommon.
This work has been elegantly float framed in a museum quality painted white wash wood frame under UV plexiglass.
Measurements:
9.5 inches (vertical) by 11 inches (horizontal) by 2 inches (depth)
Art Card:
4.5 inches (vertical) by 6 inches (horizontal)
Here's what the Whitney Museum says about Marisol's "Women and Dog" in their permanent collection:
"Equal parts painting, collage, carving, and assemblage, Women and Dog was inspired by sources as diverse as its constituent materials. Marisol worked in New York during the emergence of Pop Art in the early 1960s and was one of few women associated with the movement. This sculpture reflects the fascination with everyday life that was fundamental to Pop, and yet its larger-than-life, totemic forms and the multi-faced profiles of the figures belie influences from Pre-Colombian and Native American folk art to analytic Cubism. The trio of females strolling with a child and a dog seem to suggest Marisol’s interest in social norms and conventions relating to women in society, but the composition is ambiguous. Elements of the women’s clothing are colorfully whimsical, yet they are literally “boxed in” by their garments, and their faces are marked by a deadpan impenetrability. The women, and perhaps the child too, are self-portraits—indeed, a photograph of the artist is applied directly onto the face of one of the figures—suggesting a fluid inhabitation of different female roles and identities."

Marisol Biography:
Born Maria Sol Escobar in Paris to Venezuelan parents, the artist Marisol moved to Los Angeles at age fifteen and studied for a time with the painter Hans Hofmann in New York. Rebelling against the dominance of Abstract Expressionist painting in the mid-1950s, she turned to sculpture, forging a distinctive approach that combined elements of Surrealism, Pop art, assemblage, and even folk art in her arrangements of large- scale figures. Marisol frequently used her own image—drawn, painted, sculpted, photographed, and carved—for both the male and female figures of her tableaux, which have depicted everything from monstrous, oversized children to John Wayne on horseback, a dinner date, women at a cocktail party, a wedding, and The Last Supper.

Each of the four life-sized blocky female figures in the sculptural assemblage Women and Dog is a self-portrait of the artist, carved from wood and painted. One of the figures incorporates a black- and-white photograph of Marisol; the multiple faces on two of the others were cast in plaster directly from the artist herself; while the small figure is a representation of Marisol as a child. Each sports a fashionable outfit of the period, accessorized with found objects that include a real purse and hair bow. Although the work explores variations on the generic midcentury American woman, Marisol, commenting on the piece in 1964, claimed to have been “inspired by the dog.” Indeed, the stuffed dog head—which the artist purchased from a taxidermist—is a central element of the piece; the animal, tethered by a leash, becomes another kind of accessory to these well-heeled ladies.
-Courtesy Whitney Museum

Condition: Good vintage condition with some minor creasing, and wear around the corners of this scarce signed piece. (see photos) Ships framed.