Departments
Arts
|
Week of 9 January 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 15 |
Arts
Teacher-sculptor's vigor and spirit celebrates womankind in BU Gallery's retrospective
By Joan Schwartz
Marianna Pineda entitled one series of her sculptures, created during the 1980s, The Eve Celebrant Series. In fact, much of her body of work, encompassing nearly 50 years, could be described as a celebration of Eve, portraying woman in many postures -- as monarch, mother, martyr, lover, child, and seer.
The Boston-based sculptor's work, included in museums and collections throughout the United States, may be seen in a retrospective exhibition at the Boston University Art Gallery and a companion exhibition of her drawings at the GSU Gallery, both opening on Friday, January 16.
Pineda's association with Boston University began in 1957 when she moved here with her husband and fellow sculptor, Harold Tovish, professor emeritus at SFA, and it continued off and on until her death in 1996. She served as teacher and mentor to countless students at the School for the Arts, including such prominent contemporary sculptors as Julia Shepley (SFA'80), Ruth Mordecai Slavet (SFA'70, '80), and Carol Keller (SFA'80). She was also involved extensively in the local community of artists; such organizations as the Boston Visual Arts Union benefited from her dedication.
"In my early years," wrote Pineda, "I was treated to the rich cultural life of Chicago: museums, ballet, modern dance and music." She credited her determination to become a sculptor to family visits to places such as Karnak, Athens, and the Louvre, as well as the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, which featured significant works by women.
"By focusing on the female figure," writes exhibition curator Patricia Hills, professor of art history at CAS, "she has made . . . the abstract concept of 'humankind' into tangible testimonials of the worth of people, of their prescience, their dreams, their wisdom, and their desire to nurture, to love, and to endure."
The Boston Globe's Christine Temin notes, "What marks Ms. Pineda's work, more than anything else, is that vitality and a sense of movement. Two young girls hold hands and whirl gleefully in her 1975 'Twirling,' a commission for the Sumner Street Housing for the Elderly in East Boston. Father, mother and their children are captured in the middle of a joyful jig or in homespun acrobatics in her early works. Seated on tall tripods, her 'Oracles' stretch in ecstasy or curl up in rapture."
Pineda's work has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and is in the permanent collections of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University's Fogg Museum, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn. The Spirit of Lili'uokalani, an eight-foot bronze of the last reigning monarch of Hawaii, is installed at the state capitol in Honolulu. It portrays a calm and regal Lili'uokalani, the queen who was deposed, tried, and imprisoned by the United States government.
In a 1996 Boston Herald article by Mary Jo Palumbo just months before her death, Pineda says: "Why does any person make works of art? You might as well ask, 'What is the secret of life?' I want to communicate and leave a record for the future. I want to be part of a continuum of the past that tells us what it is to be human, the best and the worst of it."
Special events connected with the exhibition include a panel discussion moderated by exhibition curator Patricia Hills at 1 p.m. Wednesday, January 21, entitled "Boston Sculptors Consider Contemporary Sculpture in New England"; a gallery talk by Harold Tovish, noted sculptor and husband of Marianna Pineda, who will discuss her life and work at 1 p.m. Wednesday, February 4; and a gallery talk by Katie Delmez, curatorial assistant for the exhibition, at 1 p.m. Saturday, February 21.
Marianna Pineda: A Retrospective is on exhibition from Friday, January 16, to Saturday, March 1, 1998, at the Boston University Art Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave. The opening reception is 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, January 16. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Exhibitions and all gallery events are free and open to the public. For more information, call 617-353-3329.
Marianna Pineda: Selected Drawings is on exhibition from Friday, January 16, to Friday, February 13, 1998, at the GSU Gallery, George Sherman Union, second floor, 775 Commonwealth Ave. The opening reception is Friday, January 16, from 5 to 7 p.m. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Sunday, noon to 7 p.m. Call 617-353-5707 for more information.