"MADRID - The most famous portrait of Maruja Mallo depicts the artist covered from head to toe in seaweed. She is crowned and draped with long, rope-like strands of kelp, her arms raised triumphantly like an all-powerful marine goddess. This unconventional photograph, snapped in 1945 by the poet Pablo Neruda on a Chilean beach, was no doubt carefully orchestrated by the Spanish artist, who viewed herself as an extension of her unique work, where female energy is a conduit for natural and even cosmic forces."
"Maruja Mallo: Mask and Compass at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the Mallo's largest retrospective to date. Featuring 100 paintings, some 70 drawings, and 100 archival documents - including the aforementioned photo - the expansive presentation traces her entire career trajectory. Curator Patricia Molins has taken great care in elaborating a wide view of the artist's exceptionally varied oeuvre; in addition to her major two-dimensional artworks, we're privy to her published writings, photographic self-portraits, and meticulous, quasi-scientific notebooks,"
Maruja Mallo cultivated a modernist practice in which female energy functions as a conduit for natural and cosmic forces. The retrospective Mask and Compass at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía presents 100 paintings, 70 drawings and 100 archival documents, including a 1945 seaweed portrait photographed by Pablo Neruda. Curator Patricia Molins assembled paintings alongside published writings, photographic self-portraits, meticulous quasi-scientific notebooks, recreations of lost set designs and ceramic works. Born Ana María Gómez González in Viveiro, Galicia, in 1902, Mallo trained at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and joined the Generación del '27.
Read at Hyperallergic
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