Los Angeles artist Dora De Larios made ceramic sculpture and functional works that reference her Mexican heritage as well as Japanese art and a range of other international traditions. Her passion for art began during childhood visits to the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, where she felt a deep emotional resonance with ancient Mesoamerican sculptures. De Larios studied at the University of Southern California, where prominent Los Angeles ceramists Susan Peterson and Vivika and Otto Heino exposed her to both Japanese clay techniques and the radical ceramic abstractions of Peter Voulkos and his circle. After graduating in 1957, she set up her own studio and sold dishware as well as figurative sculpture. In the early 1970s, she began to take on architectural commissions, creating tile murals for prominent civic projects and commercial spaces.
In the late 1960s through the 1970s, De Larios made several Warrior sculptures, demonstrating her increasing confidence as an artist. Influenced by ancient West Mexican figurines that the artist had seen in both Los Angeles and Mexico, the Warriors had distinctive, expressive faces and a range of dynamic poses. Their hollow forms recall Japanese haniwa tomb sculptures, but unlike those slab and coil built forms, De Larios’s work was assembled from thrown elements. This Warrior from 1970 incorporates an owl and a ram, animals that recur frequently in the artist’s work.
Staci Steinberger, Associate Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, 2021
