Schendel, Mira (1919–1988)

Mira Schendel (b. 1919; d. 1988), graphic artist, painter, and sculptor. Swiss-born Schendel lived in Italy until age thirty, when she emigrated to Brazil. Abstract art with minimalist overtone dominated her repertory until the 1960s, when her work took on constructivist influences, with a monumentality of void characterizing her graphic works. In one piece, simply titled Drawing, for example, linguistic and mathematical signs and scratches are drawn on inked glass and are then transferred onto delicate Japanese paper. The visual result recalls Chinese painting. In 1964 Schendel represented Brazil in the Second Biennial of American Art of Córdoba, Argentina, She had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo in 1964, at a London gallery in 1965, and in 1971 at the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. In 1975 she was one of twelve artists selected to participate in a nationally sponsored traveling exhibition and discussion series.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fundação Nacional De Arte, Pinacoteca do Estado—São Paulo (1982), p. 174.

Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820–1980 (1989), pp. 275-276.

Additional Bibliography

Carvajal, Rina, Alma Ruiz, and Susan Martin. The Experimental Exercise of Freedom: Lygia Clark, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Hélio Oiticica, Mira Schendel. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999.

Marques, Maria Eduarda Castro Magalhães. Mira Schendel. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify Edições, 2001.

Zegher, M. Catherine de. Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

                                Caren A. Meghreblian