Exercise of Power: The Art of Ana Maria Pacheco

by George Szirtes, Ana Maria Pacheco

This text traces the career of Ana Maria Pacheco, a 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 into one of the most renowned figurative artists of her time, with a career crowned by a residency at the National Gallery, London in 1999. The book explores the strands of the Baroque, the magical and the humane in her imagery 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 artists shy away from literature and myth, Pacheco meets them head on and draws sustenance from the fields of reference they provide. By following the progress of her imagination through the various media in which she works, the book reveals the scale of Pacheco's vision and highlights the streams of visual narrative that make her a unique figure; one uniting the sensibility of South America with that of Western Europe.

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. He was brought up in London and studied Fine Art in London and Leeds. His poems began appearing in national magazines in 1973 and his first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial prize the following year.

By this time he was married with two children. After the publication of his second book, November and May, 1982, he was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Since then he has published several books and won various other prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005.

Having returned to his birthplace, Budapest, for the first time in 1984, he has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere. His own work has been translated into numerous languages.

Beside his work in poetry and translation he has written Exercise of Power, a study of the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, and, together with Penelope Lively, edited New Writing 10 published by Picador in 2001.

George Szirtes lives near Norwich with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch. Together they ran The Starwheel Press. Corvina has recently produced Budapest: Image, Poem, Film, their collaboration in poetry and visual work.