1. Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter, and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork.
34 Facts About Ana Mendieta
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Ana Mendieta lived there with her husband of eight months, minimalist sculptor Carl Andre.
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Ana Mendieta's father, Ignacio Alberto Mendieta de Lizaur, was an attorney and the nephew of Carlos Mendieta, who was installed as president by Fulgencio Batista for just under two years.
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Ana Mendieta's mother, Raquel Oti de Rojas, was a chemist, a researcher, and the granddaughter of Carlos Maria de Rojas, a sugar mill owner celebrated for his role in the war against Spain for Cuban independence.
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In 1966, Ana Mendieta was reunited with her mother and younger brother.
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Ana Mendieta's father joined them in 1979, having spent 18 years in a political prison in Cuba for his involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
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In Cuba, Ana Mendieta grew up as a sheltered, upper-class child.
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Ana Mendieta was first a French major and art minor, but when she transferred to the University of Iowa, she was inspired by the avant-garde community and the hills of Iowa's landscape.
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Ana Mendieta earned a BA and MA in painting, and an MFA in Intermedia under the instruction of acclaimed artist Hans Breder.
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Ana Mendieta faced a great deal of discrimination while in art school.
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In college, Ana Mendieta's work focused on blood and violence toward women.
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Ana Mendieta's work was somewhat autobiographical, drawing from her history of being displaced from her native Cuba, and focused on themes including feminism, violence, life, death, identity, place, and belonging.
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Ana Mendieta's works are generally associated with the four Classical elements.
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Ana Mendieta often focused on a spiritual and physical connection with the earth.
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Ana Mendieta's body was the subject and object of the work.
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Ana Mendieta used it to emphasize the societal conditions by which the female body is colonized as the object of male desire and ravaged under masculine aggression.
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In 1983, Ana Mendieta was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome.
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Ana Mendieta continued to use natural elements in her work.
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Ana Mendieta did this to express herself becoming part of the earth and to embody a process of rituals.
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When she began her Silueta Series in the 1970s, Ana Mendieta was one of many artists experimenting with the emerging genres of land art, body art, and performance art.
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Ana Mendieta was possibly the first to combine these genres in what she called "earth-body" sculptures.
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Many have interpreted Ana Mendieta's recurring use of this mother figure and her own female silhouette as feminist art.
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However, because Ana Mendieta's work explores many ideas including life, death, identity, and place all at once, it cannot be categorized as part of one idea or movement.
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In Corazon de Roca con Sangre Ana Mendieta kneels next to an impression of her body that has been cut into the soft, muddy riverbank.
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Ana Mendieta had returned to the island as a part of a cultural exchange group and was eager to begin exploring her birthplace after having spent 19 years in exile.
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Clearwater explains that the photographs of Ana Mendieta's sculptures were often as important as the piece they were documenting because the nature of Ana Mendieta's work was so impermanent.
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Ana Mendieta spent as much time and thought on the creation of the photographs as she did on the sculptures themselves.
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The Rupestrian Sculptures that Ana Mendieta created were influenced by the Taino people, "native inhabitants of the pre-Hispanic Antilles", whom Ana Mendieta became fascinated by and studied.
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Ana Mendieta completed five photo-etchings of the Rupestrian Sculptures before she died in 1985.
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Ana Mendieta died on September 8,1985, in New York City, after falling from her 34th-floor apartment in Greenwich Village at 300 Mercer Street.
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Ana Mendieta lived there with her husband of eight months, minimalist sculptor Carl Andre.
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Ana Mendieta fell 33 stories onto the roof of a deli.
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The group deposited piles of animal blood and guts in front of the establishment, with protesters donning transparent tracksuits with "I Wish Ana Mendieta Was Still Alive" written on them.
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In 2009, Ana Mendieta was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Cintas Foundation.