Ilerda V
Marta Palau
This piece is representative of Palau’s work, both in its materiality and in its allusions to femininity. In her final years, the artist acknowledged that the shape of the piece formally evokes a large vagina, although she continued to describe it as an unconscious outcome. Ilerda references an old toponymy of the Catalan city where Palau was born; she used it to title a series of textile-based pieces.
These “soft sculptures,” as critics called them at the time, given their use of textiles and tapestry, characterize Palau’s volumetric oeuvre of the 1970s and distinguish her from the reigning trends in Mexican sculpture, which strived for geometric monumentality.
MARTA PALAU (1934)
Ilerda V, 1973
Spanish jute, high-warp cotton
Acquisition, 2005