Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta (18 November 1948 – 8 September 1985) was a Cuban-American artist famous for her performance art and "earth-body" sculptural, photographic, and video work.

Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba but moved to the United States at a young age. At 13, she and her older sister were exiled from Cuba because her family opposed the revolutionary government. They were placed in foster care in Iowa through Operation Peter Pan run by the U.S. government.

She earned a BA from the University of Iowa in 1969 and subsequently earned two MFAs, one in painting and one in the artist Hans Breder's Intermedia program. Throughout the course of her career, she created work in Cuba, Mexico, Italy, and the United States of America.

Much of Mendieta's work could be considered strongly feminist. One theme in her early performance art was violence against the female body. Later Mendieta focused on a spiritual and physical connection with the land, most particularly in her "silueta" pieces, which typically involved carving her imprint into sand or mud, making body prints or painting her outline or silhouette onto a wall.

She died on 8 September 1985 in New York from a fall from a 34th floor apartment in Greenwich Village. Eight months earlier Mendieta had married the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. Andre was tried and acquitted of her murder; during the trial he described her death as suicide.

Her estate is managed by the Galerie Lelong in New York City.

Bibliography

*Viso, Olga. "Unseen Mendieta: The Unpublished Works of Ana Mendieta." New York: Prestel, 2008.
*Viso, Olga. "Ana Mendieta: Earth Body." Hatje Cantz Publishers in collaboration with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2004.
*Miwon Kwon, "Bloody Valentines: Afterimages by Ana Mendieta". In: Catherine de Zegher (ed.), "Inside the Visible". The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston & MIT Press, 1996.
*Anne Raine, "Embodied Geographies". In: Griselda Pollock (ed.) "Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts". Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-14128-1

External links

* cite news
first=Blake
last=Gopnik
pages=N01
title='Silueta' of A Woman: Sizing Up Ana Mendieta
date=2004-10-17
publisher=Washington Post
url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35164-2004Oct15.html
* [http://www.galerielelong.com/ Galerie Lelong site - for images and artist's CV]
* [http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa9.htm Information on 2004 traveling retrospective presented by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]