Biography
Ana Mendieta® (b.1948, Havana, Cuba; d.1985, New York, US) was an interdisciplinary artist, who worked across sculpture, drawing, film, and photography. She is best known for her earth/body works, most specifically her now iconic Silueta Series, in which she used her body, and later the absence of the body to create images, or traces in landscape, as a way of connecting with nature and the universe.
‘For the images to have magic qualities,’ she once said, ‘I had to go to the source of life, to mother nature.’ Born in Havana, Mendieta was exiled to Iowa at the age of 12 and devoted her life and work to an exploration of displacement, identity, material mimesis, and the body as an articulation of nature and violence.
Spanning a period of 15 years, Mendieta created groundbreaking work across mediums, and created site-specific installations using organic materials such as earth, water and fire. Her pioneering work is in more than 120 public collections worldwide, and has been the subject of 56 monographic exhibitions, which includes 16 major museum retrospectives.
Works
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Untitled (Grass on Woman), 1972
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Untitled (Chicken Piece), 1972
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Sweating Blood, 1973
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Untitled, 1973
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Door Piece, 1973
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Flower Person, Flower Body, 1975
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Butterfly, 1975
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Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece), 1976
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Untitled: Silueta Series (Figure with Hay Burned), 1977
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Silueta Series (Tree of Life Series), 1978
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Untitled (Silueta Series), c. 1978
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Volcán, 1979
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Volcán, 1979
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Gunpowder Silueta (Fundamento Palo Monte), 1980
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La Venus Negra (The Black Venus), 1981
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Birth (Gunpowder Works), 1981
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Untitled, 1981
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Untitled, c.1981–84
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Untitled, c.1983–84
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Untitled, c.1984–85
Press
Exhibitions
Books
News

Birgit Jürgenssen, Ana Mendieta & Dorothea Tanning
in ‘Animal!? An Exhibition of Masterpieces’, Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc Pour la Culture, Landerneau

Ana Mendieta
‘Poetry of Fire: Chromatic Experiment in the Films of Ana Mendieta, Derek Jarman, and P.Staff Film Screening, Discussion, and Book Signing

Ana Mendieta
in ‘Expanding Landscapes: Painting after Land Art’, Abbot Hall, Lakeland Art, Lake District

Ana Mendieta
in ‘Earthshaker’, 3-person exhibition with Derek Jarman & P.Staff, Del Vaz Projects, Santa Monica, California

Birgit Jürgenssen, Ana Mendieta & Hannah Wilke
in ‘Vital Signs: Artists and the Body’, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ana Mendieta
in ‘Mysterious Ways: Art, Faith and Transcendence’, The Glucksman, University College Cork

Ana Mendieta & Birgit Jürgenssen
in ‘The Irreplaceable Human – Conditions of Creativity in the Age of AI’ at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk

Ana Mendieta & Lygia Clark
in ‘Action, Gesture, Performance: Feminism, the Body and Abstraction’, Whitechapel Gallery, London

Ana Mendieta
in ‘Zin Ex: Body and Architecture’, Tabakalera, International Centre for Contemporary Culture, San Sebastián

Ana Mendieta & Lenore Tawney
in ‘Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond’, The Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York

Robert Mapplethorpe & Ana Mendieta
in ‘Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography’, Barbican, London

Birgit Jürgenssen, Ana Mendieta & Hannah Wilke
in ‘FEMINISMS!’, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

Lygia Clark, Fernanda Gomes, Ana Mendieta & Michelle Stuart
in ‘The Sensation of Space’, The Warehouse, Dallas