The cult female artist that is getting her biggest ever UK exhibition at Tate Modern this summer

"Among Ana Mendieta 's best-known photographs is of a woman lying across a rocky grave, flowers seeming to grow around, and even through, her skin. Provocative, beautiful art tied to tragedy is something of a Mendieta trademark. The artist's work digs its claws deep into the dirt, inspiration sprouting twisted flowers from cracked earth, appealing to feminist scholars and floppy-fringed emos alike. The Cuban-American artist's work is often introduced alongside the nature of her suspicious death at 36, when she allegedly fell from the 34th floor of her Manhattan apartment in 1985."

"Tate Modern wants to change all that. This summer (from July 15), the biggest ever UK exhibition of Mendieta's work will open at the Bankside gallery with a host of pieces never before seen on these shores. A total of 150 Mendieta pieces will be on show at the Tate, including rarely seen drawings and restored film, with the exhibition pulling from her 1970s and 1980s works to tell a thematic and biographical story that keeps the natural world at its centre."

"Fans of Mendieta will likely best know her 'earth-body' works, which feature the artist's body outlined with delicate flowers and scorched earth. The Cuban-born artist regularly manipulated elemental forces along with materials like moss and gunpowder, occasionally accessorised with animal hearts and handprints. Her earthy works combined with a more divine force as she started carving goddesses into rock and building them from piles of sand, what Mendieta called the Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures)."

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-American multidisciplinary artist known for earth-body works that used her body, natural materials and elemental forces to create visceral images and sculptures. Her practice encompassed photography, film and drawings and included the Esculturas Rupestres—carvings and sand-built goddesses—often incorporating moss, gunpowder, animal hearts and handprints. Mendieta died in 1985 at 36 in a disputed fall from her Manhattan apartment, a death that linked her reputation to her husband Carl Andre's murder trial. Tate Modern will stage the UK's largest Mendieta exhibition from July 15, presenting about 150 works, restored films, rare drawings and restaged installations centered on nature and biography.

Read at Time Out London