The Three Graces: How America Martin Depicts the Concept in Her Artwork
The concept of The Three Graces in art has been prominent over the centuries, inspiring artists such as Picasso, we now see the style and theme of The Three Graces vary in unique ways, taking on different meanings from artist to artist. Originally, The Three Graces depicted a group of three goddesses—Euphrosyne, Thalia, and Aglaia—symbolizing grace, beauty, and charm. This concept of three has come to serve as a visual guide for artists, providing the foundation for an element of composition. Artist’s depictions of The Three Graces—rather than representing grace, beauty, and charm, as was the case with the original—can serve as an expression of what the artists themselves value, or what they are wanting to convey about/to society.
America Martin, a Colombian-American fine artist specializing in painting and sculpture, plays around with this concept of The Three Graces in her own artwork. America’s pieces focus primarily on people and the human body in an abstract way, using large proportions, various shapes, and lively lines to encapsulate form. Her Colombian heritage is also a huge inspiration behind the themes and subjects of her pieces, as she aims to create a new way of representing the combination of indigenous motifs with abstract motifs.
Her paintings, composed of large portraits of people, sometimes consist of just one person, sometimes of a group of people, and sometimes they focus specifically on a group of three people. An example of this can be seen in the installation America Martin painted on the wall of the JoAnne Artman Gallery. The piece, composed of black lines and shapes to make up the form of the human body, depicts the original Three Graces—with the woman in the middle facing the opposite way of the two women on the ends—redefined by America Martin’s signature style.
Installation at JoAnne Artman Gallery, New York; America Martin, 2021.
This callback to The Three Graces can be seen in many of America’s paintings, such as Women Arm in Arm, Women Seated Under Guava Tree, and Men in the Apple Orchard. The painting Women Arm in Arm is composed of three women with abstract features that make up America’s signature style. In the painting, the three women are linking arms while the two women on the ends are holding flowers. While analyzing this painting, I noticed how all three of the women were facing forward and wondered if depicting only the two women on the ends holding flowers—not the woman in the middle—could have been America’s way of representing The Grace in the center of the original Three Graces, who is turned around and facing the opposite way of the other Graces on the ends.
The painting Women Seated Under Guava Tree is composed of three women surrounded by flora and sitting very close to one another to the effect that the shapes making up their arms and legs create a sort of geometric abstraction within the center of the piece. In both this piece and the one mentioned above, America includes flora, a common motif seen in many of her artworks. The motif of flowers and flora could be representative of many things, including purity, romance, or vitality. In the case of these pieces being a reference to The Three Graces, the flora pictured could be another way to shoutout this reference, encapsulating the unique grace, beauty, and charm of this piece and the different ways those three adjectives could be represented; how America draws inspiration from her background and her heritage and uses her distinctive artistic style to depict what The Three Graces mean to her.
America’s painting Men in the Apple Orchard is incredibly interesting because it explores the idea of men symbolizing The Three Graces. The painting is composed of three nude men taking on the exact form of the original Three Graces piece, being the two men on the ends facing forward while the man in the middle faces the other way. This could be a way of demonstrating how the idea and concept of The Three Graces does not necessarily take on the meaning that it once did, but rather the meaning can be shaped and redefined by the individual artist. This painting could also be a way of challenging preconceived notions of The Three Graces, showing how it is not gender specific, and actually has nothing to do with gender at all.
When looking into and analyzing the concept of The Three Graces in art, it was interesting to see the various ways this concept was depicted from artist to artist. The redefined symbolism of the Three Graces and the compositional element of three in artwork can be seen as prominent themes in many of America Martin’s paintings. Through paintings titled Women Arm in Arm, Women Seated Under Guava Tree, and Men in the Apple Orchard, America uses the motif of flowers and flora, perhaps as a way to give a new meaning to the original ideas of grace, beauty, and charm. In these pieces she also challenges the representation of gender in The Three Graces, proving that it has nothing to do with the concept at all, rather, the concept now serves as a way for artists to express their individual values along with what they want to convey to society.
