SANTANDER.- Marisol: When Things Are Just Beginning is the first retrospective of Marisol’s drawings, featuring more than 100 works spanning from the 1950s to her death, presented alongside a selection of sculptures that extend her drawing practice into three dimensions, archival materials, and several of Warhol’s films in which Marisol starred. The extensive selection of works, drawn almost entirely from the collection of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, NY, highlights drawing as the most consistent thread throughout Marisol’s career, the medium by which she wove her global concerns, private discomforts, and imaginative fictions throughout her practice.

The title recalls dealer Leo Castelli’s remark to Marisol in the late 1950s when she left the United States following her successful presentation at his New York gallery: “How can you leave when things are just beginning?” The phrase also resonates with her subsequent decisions to withdraw from the centre of the art world at key moments in her career, after which her work would re-emerge profoundly transformed.

This exhibition forms part of Fundación Botín’s ongoing commitment to curatorial and scholarly research on drawing, which has included wide-ranging presentations dedicated to Goya, Millares, Juan Muñoz, and Silvia Bächli. It is accompanied by a bilingual Spanish–English catalogue that traces Marisol’s life and work through her drawing practice.

Curator: Dra. Laura Vallés Vílchez.

Marisol Escobar, known simply as Marisol, was a Paris-born Venezuelan and American artist (1930–2016) celebrated for her bold and satirical sculptural portraits and mixed-media compositions. Her work explored gender roles, celebrity culture, and family dynamics, combining humour with incisive social critique.

She emerged in New York’s vibrant art scene of the late 1950s and 1960s, moving in the same circles as Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Rauschenberg. Throughout her life, she achieved wide international recognition, with major exhibitions in Europe and the United States, including representing Venezuela at the 1968 Venice Biennale and participating in Documenta IV, where she was one of only four women among 149 artists.

Although her practice developed in parallel with Pop Art, she never fully embraced it, creating instead deeply personal works often imbued with feminist and political overtones.