Painter, poet and activist for feminist causes since the 1960s, Mari Chordà has a significant presence in the MACBA Collection, including the works Líquids (Liquids, 1966) and Llàgrimes (Tears, 1966), painted while Chordà was in Paris, where she lived for two years and came into contact with the artistic activity that was taking place there. Her use of colour and form brings her close to the Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art movements, which were very present in the French capital during those years. One of the artist’s references was the sculptor, painter and filmmaker Niki de Saint Phalle. As with this French creator, Chordà seeks to create non-figurative images in her representation of the female body and its experience of pleasure.

One of the paintings in the Collection, Coitus Pop, from 1968, was part of the 2015 exhibition The World Goes Pop, presented at Tate Modern in London. This and other works like Vulva (1968), which is part of her extended series Vagines (Vaginas), make it clear that Chordà was a pioneer in representing women’s bodies and sexuality in a way that avoids voyeurism and the patriarchal gaze. Later, in the early 1990s, she seeked to revisit her initial artistic work and her place of origin, the lands of the Ebro and Montsià, incorporating certain references to the natural world – especially the marine world – which she called “the female cetaceans”. Cetàcies d’argent (Silver Female Cetaceans), from 1994, is one of these works. It is a sculpture made of polychromed wooden lace that combines Chordà’s interest in the work of American biologist Lynn Margulis, discoverer of the spirochaete bacterium, closely linked to the origin of life, with her sculptural production with wooden pieces that have a certain playful component, developed in parallel with painting. In all these works, it seems like Chordà’s interest in form is an expression of her passion for life.