- Artist or Maker
- Dora De Larios
United States, California, Los Angeles, 1933-2018 - Title
- Water Goddess
- Date Made
- 2009
- Medium
- Glazed stoneware, wood
- Dimensions
- Overall: 96 × 26 × 26 in. (243.84 × 66.04 × 66.04 cm)
A) Head: 19 1/8 × 17 1/4 × 11 1/2 in. (48.58 × 43.82 × 29.21 cm)
B) Body: 83 × 26 1/2 × 27 in. (210.82 × 67.31 × 68.58 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2017.182.3a-b
- Curatorial Notes
Beginning in the 1980s, Los Angeles artist Dora De Larios began to explore goddess imagery in her work. Confronting the challenges she faced as a Mexican American woman in a ceramic art field dominated by white men, she drew on ancient mythologies of powerful female figures in a series of deeply personal sculptures. Born in L.A. to Mexican immigrant parents, De Larios was deeply influenced by the diverse city, infusing works like the goddesses with ancient ceramic traditions from her Mexican heritage, as well as those of the cultures and artistic movements that surrounded her in Southern California.
De Larios created Water Goddess, along with the related Ocean Goddess (M.2017.182.2a-b), Air Goddess (M.2017.182.1a-b), and Earth Goddess (M.2022.200a-b), for her 2009 retrospective at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles (now Craft Contemporary). These powerful totems embody the spirit of the natural elements through both abstract and representational symbols.
Staci Steinberger
2017/2022
- Copyright
- © Dora De Larios, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA, by Charlie Powers
