Synopses & Reviews
Exercise of Power traces the career of Ana Maria Pacheco, a remarkable sculptor-painter-printmaker, from her origins and education in Brazil, through her arrival in England as a British Council scholar at the Slade in 1973, and her development over the next twenty-five years into one of the most outstanding figurative artists of her time.
The book explores the use of mythical and biblical elements in Pacheco's art and relates these to the culture of post-colonial Brazil as well as to the visual language of power and potency in Europe. At a time when most contemporary artists shy away from literature and myth, Pacheco meets them head on and draws sustenance from the fields of reference they provide.