Marcela Donso was born in 1961 in Santiago, Chile where she grew up. She spent parts of her childhood in the United States and Venezuela but returned to Chile in 1970. From 1972 to 1973, she attended a conception steel arts workshop. Later she studied at the University of Chile School of Art from 1984 and 1988. She received a degree in Art, specializing in painting and engraving. She moved to Mozambique, Africa in 1989 and studied under artists such as Malangatana Ngwenya. She also learned to speak Portuguese.

 

     Marcela Donso’s artwork fits into our art gallery because of how she integrates realistic and unrealistic characters into her art. The unrealistic characteristics resembles the magic in her art. The part that is realistic in her art are the human forms. The way they are integrated is when she gives the humans an unrealistic “magical” characteristics such as extra hands. Marcela is known pretty well for her magical realism art.

 

     Donso’s work includes a lot of dark images as well as a few bright colored images. It shows a lot of things out of the “norm” such as naked women or demons. These characters have realistic features while at the same time exhibit unrealistic magical features such as a demon kissing an angel. Her works have patterns and are pretty similar to each other. Donso has won an award in 1992 from the Distinction Union of Palestinian Women seen by Chile. She has also had individual expositions such as the one in 1999 Latin American Memorial in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

 

      Starting on the top row, in the first image to the left we have a young scary looking girl holding a rose. The main colors in this image are red, white, blue and black. Her face is white and she is holding the prickly rose like it is nothing so I have a feeling that there is some demonic feature in this girl. She does not seem to be bothered by the painful rose thorns. The middle image shows a woman in a body of water with floating flowers. We can view her robe slipping down and some kind of bird hat she is wearing which looks as if her hair has turned into a kind of bird. There is also a dove flying in the background. The third photo is similar to the first but this time it is an older woman with dark hair holding a dagger. She has red flowers in her hair but her face is white like the first girl giving her a demonic feature. The woman is wearing a red robe and has red eyes. The color theme of this image is red blue and black. The first photo to the left of the bottom row shows a brighter photo of a blonde woman who has six hands. The six hands are what makes this photo so “magical” and unrealistic because humans only have two hands. If you look closely into the image you can see wooden houses but without a closer look you would think she is sitting in a field. The main colors of this image are blue and tan. Finally on the bottom right we have a dark image of an angel holding and kissing a demon. This is very unrealistic but at the same time the characters have realistic qualities such as faces and an angel like body. The main colors of this image are white, black, and gold.