Even the nearly casual of art fans are likely familiar with Andy Warhol, the American artist known for his bold colors and daring explorations of popular culture. Simply non many people know Marisol, the Venezuelan American aggregation sculptor who was a key role player in the Pop Fine art movement and likely influenced her close friend Warhol's work.

A new exhibition at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) re-centers the story of the Pop Art era around Marisol—short for María Sol Escobar—and portrays Warhol as more than of a supporting character.

Marisol's Dinner Date, a wooden sculpture of two women at a table
Both figures inDinner Datewait like their creator. Yale Academy Art Gallery, Gift of Susan Morse Hilles. © 2021 Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Marisol and Warhol Take New York, on view through September 5, aims to "reclaim the importance of her exercise; reframe the strength, originality and daring nature of her work; and reconsider her every bit one of the leading figures of the pop era," according to the exhibition website.

As Katie White writes for Artnet, Marisol's "piquant wooden figures with their endearingly boxy forms delighted the art earth" when she was a rising star in the 1960s—and now, more than than 50 years later, they're dorsum in the spotlight.

The exhibition—developed by Jessica Beck, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where information technology ran in 2021—is the first to explore the friends' rich personal and professional relationship, co-ordinate to PAMM. It features the sculptor's signature works, including a multifaceted, wooden Warhol sitting in a chair with a real pair of shoes below and another, chosen Dinner Appointment, that depicts Marisol dining with herself over a meal of Television receiver dinners.

As well on display are photographs of the artistic friends together and examples of their overlapping themes and subjects, such as Coca-Cola and the Kennedys. Silent films Warhol fabricated of Marisol in 1963 and 1964 run throughout the exhibition, showing the "intimate and magnetic sides" of the ordinarily coy sculptor, per the museum.

"The films bring the exhibition to life," Brook tells the New York Times' Joseph B. Treaster. "They show the [friends'] connectedness."

Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol and Marisol were friends and creative collaborators. Mostcot via Wikimedia Commons under CC Past-SA 4.0

Though Marisol as well institute inspiration in pop civilization, her piece of work has always been hard to define. Every bit a 1965 New York Times headline proclaimed, "It'southward Non Pop, It'due south Not Op—It's Marisol." Her influences ranged from pre-Hispanic art to the Catholic imagery she studied in schoolhouse as a child.

The artists had very unlike upbringings; Marisol was born to wealthy Venezuelan parents in Paris in 1930, while Warhol was built-in to working-class immigrant parents in Pittsburgh in 1928. But they shared some common experiences and often explored similar topics. Both lost parents as children: Marisol's mother died past suicide when she was 11; Warhol lost his father every bit a teenager. And they both changed their names when they moved to New York City, with Marisol combining her start and middle names and dropping her surname and Warhol dropping the "a" from his family unit's name, Warhola.

When they crossed paths in New York in the early 1960s, the pair became fast friends, often serving as each other'south muses. They attended events and parties together as their creative stars rose.

Throughout the decade, the sculptor garnered media attention and praise for both her work and for her own dazzler and fashion: 3 of her sculptures appeared on Time mag'south cover, and Marisol herself fabricated it onto the cover of Glamour magazine, per the New York Times. Despite coverage that positioned her as a frivolous "daughter creative person," Marisol's career every bit a serious sculptor thrived.

Only starting in 1968, Marisol dropped out of the spotlight. Equally fine art curator Douglas Dreishpoon told ARTbooks' David Ebony, she became increasingly concerned about the commercialism of the fine art world. Afterwards Valerie Solanas, an artist and author with a grudge against Warhol, shot him in 1968, Marisol left the country.

When she got back to work five years later on, reports Sebastian Smee for the Boston Globe, she was disillusioned and lost interest in creating art for the general public. Meanwhile, the fine art world had shifted toward minimalism and conceptual art, per Faddy's Grace Edquist; Marisol became less relevant and, over fourth dimension, "she was written out of the white male-dominated pop narrative," according to PAMM.

She wasn't the only one: As fine art historian Kalliopi Minioudaki notes in the Oxford Fine art Periodical, many women of the Pop Art movement accept been forgotten. "Fifty-fifty though many of them were included in early Popular shows, they rarely have plant a secure place in Popular Art's histories," she writes, "and even when they are included, they are viewed mostly as exceptions…."

Warhol, meanwhile, became ane of the best-known artists of all time.

"She refused to adhere to social norms and the norms of the art globe," Maritza Lacayo, the testify's assistant curator, tells Vogue. "But that is why she was rejected by the art historical canon. If you don't place yourself, they will place yous."

Marisol died in 2016 at the age of 85.

Marisol, Andy, 1962–63
Andyfeatures a figure of Warhol and two real shoes. Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Digital Image © Acquavella LLC 2022.© 2022 Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Lodge (ARS), New York

Though the exhibition explores her famous, and mutually beneficial, friendship with the male monarch of Pop Art, information technology centers the enigmatic woman whose artistry was a casualty of its era. Marisol may accept been beautiful and stylish (Warhol called her "The showtime girl artist with glamour!"). Only, the exhibition argues, she deserves to be remembered equally an important artist in her ain right—ane who made her mark in a notoriously male-dominated world.

The artist herself didn't like labels. In 1965, she told the Times that "… whatsoever they want to call me is okay—Popular or anything." But she was secure in one thing: Her hard-earned success. "Information technology has happened," she connected, "because I have made it happen."

"Marisol and Warhol Accept New York" will exist on view at Pérez Fine art Museum Miami through September five.

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