MARISOL

born May 22, 1930, Paris, Fr. in full Escobar Marisol American sculptor of boxlike figurative works combining wood and other materials and often grouped as tableaux. Marisol was born in Paris of Venezuelan parents and spent her youth in Los Angeles and Paris. In 1950 she moved to New York City, where she studied at the Art Students League and the Hans Hofmann School. From her earliest, roughly carved figures, she worked mainly in wood. She gained wide recognition in the 1960s for her mixed-media figure groups; the juxtaposition of blockish, inert forms and their painted, cast-plaster, or found-object features and accoutrements lend the works a deadpan irony. Her portrait groups of public figures are particularly satirical.