NEW YORK, NY.- Marian Goodman Gallery announced the global representation of the Estate of Ana Mendieta in collaboration with Alison Jacques in London and Prats Nogueras Blanchard in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid). The gallery will present its first solo exhibition of Mendieta’s work in November 2025 at our headquarters in New York.


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Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) was a prolific multidisciplinary artist who primarily used elements from nature such as earth, water, fire and flora. Mendieta’s oeuvre includes painting, drawing, photography, film/video, sculpture and site-specific works. Her singular interventions embraced the extremities of nature and disrupted societal conventions.

In her sculptures, Mendieta employed her own body as a canvas to initially connect with the earth, and ultimately as a means of expression to convey notions of existence, resurgence and renewal. These site-inclusive works, exquisitely ethereal and transitory, were contemplative, existential meditations on mortality and the natural world. A pioneer and innovator in her process and her prodigious output, Mendieta remains a significant source of inspiration for successive generations of artists.

In July 2026, the Tate Modern will present a significant retrospective dedicated to Mendieta that will feature many of her important works, along with newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptural pieces, many of which will make their U.K. debut.

Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) was a prolific multidisciplinary artist who primarily used elements from nature such as earth, water, fire and flora. Mendieta’s oeuvre includes painting, drawing, photography, film/video, sculpture and site-specific works. Her singular interventions embraced the extremities of nature and disrupted societal conventions.

In her sculptures, Mendieta employed her own body as a canvas to initially connect with the earth, and ultimately as a means of expression to convey notions of existence, resurgence and renewal. These site-inclusive works, exquisitely ethereal and transitory, were contemplative, existential meditations on mortality and the natural world. A pioneer and innovator in her process and her prodigious output, Mendieta remains a significant source of inspiration for successive generations of artists.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Mendieta was sent to the United States as a young teen after Fidel Castro came to power. As a student of the prestigious Intermedia MFA program at the University of Iowa in 1972, she began working with her body and with Super 8 film, using the medium as a conduit to provoke her audience. In documenting her performative actions, Mendieta compelled both participants and viewers to acknowledge and respond to violence rather than remain passive observers. Her first trip to Mexico in 1971 instilled in Mendieta a desire to connect the landscape to the body, a theme that is reflected in her Siluetas (Silhouettes in Spanish), a series of over 200 earthworks that were made in several locations. In these earth interventions, she created imprints of herself in the landscape, oftentimes covering her body in organic materials as a form of burial, in a manner redolent of architectural ruin. In 1980, Mendieta returned to Cuba for the first time since her exile to rediscover her spiritual connection to the land and her ancestral home. Here, Mendieta demonstrated a profound kinship to Neolithic heritage in her Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures), large-scale works that were aptly carved directly into the walls of the limestone caves of Jaruco Park, a location known for its pre-colonial elements and as a site for political opposition. When awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1983, Mendieta began to focus on work in the studio, constructing sculptures using sand and earth, extracting resources from places of personal significance. The implementation of natural materials and the body in Mendieta’s work speak to the fundamental, universal bond of humanity and nature, transcending all cultural and societal boundaries. Her unique engagements with the natural and social world have left an indelible impact on the cultural landscape.

In July 2026, the Tate Modern will present a significant retrospective dedicated to Mendieta that will feature many of her important works, along with newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptural pieces, many of which will make their U.K. debut.

Mendieta received many prestigious awards in her lifetime, including a National Endowment for the Arts Grant (1977 and 1980) and Fellowship (1982); Creative Arts Program Services Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts (1979); John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1980); New York State Council on the Arts Grant (1982); Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome (1983); Award in the Visual Arts, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, North Carolina (1984). A Visual Arts Lifetime Achievement Award was posthumously bestowed by The Cintas Foundation, New York in 2009.1984

Her work has been exhibited in 56 solo exhibitions, and 16 museum retrospectives; exhibitions include those at MUSAC, León, Spain (2024); SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Baltimore Museum Of Art, Baltimore, Maryland (2020); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2019); Middleheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium (2019); Institute for Contemporary Art, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2018); Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany (2018); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California (2016) The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2014); Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, United Kingdom (2013); Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2013); Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (2011); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004); Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2004); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California (1998); Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland (1996); Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (1996); New Museum, New York, New York (1987).

“My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the Universe.” – Ana Mendieta



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