Mira Schendel

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Mira Schendel (born June 7, 1919 in Zurich ; † July 24, 1988 in São Paulo ) was a Brazilian painter and poet .

life and work

Schendel was born as Myrrah Dagmar Dub. She was the only daughter of the textile merchant Karl Leo Dub and his wife Ada Saveria (née Büttner). After the couple separated, Mira moved with her mother to Milan , where she attended the Catholic University of Sacro Coure from 1936 . As early as 1920 she was baptized a Catholic at the instigation of her mother . In 1939 she had to leave the university due to an anti-Jewish decree of the fascist Mussolini government . She fled to an aunt in Sofia , then joined refugees traveling to Sarajevo . There she met Osip Hargesheimer, a Croatian Catholic, whom she married in 1941. With him and equipped with a Croatian passport, she moved to her mother in Milan in 1944, after which the couple settled in Rome .

In 1949 she emigrated to Brazil with her husband as a displaced person and was registered as Mirra Hergesheimer on her arrival in Rio de Janeiro . In 1950 she began to paint in her new home, Porto Alegre . In October of the same year she had her first solo exhibition, taught painting and got in touch with the circle of Brazilian modernism around Lygia Clark (1920–1988) and Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980), which - influenced by European painting - was more geometrical with forms Experimented with abstraction. However, Schendel did not join any of the groups that formed around concrete-constructive painting in Brazil. From 1951 she exhibited several times at the São Paulo Biennale , where she showed large sheets of writing and drawings with Chinese calligraphy that were influenced by Zen Buddhism. In 1954 she met the German emigrant Knut Schendel, who ran the well-known Camuta bookstore in São Paulo and whom she later married. In 1957 their daughter Ada Clara was born, their only child.

Schendel took part in documenta 12 in Schloss Wilhelmshöhe and in the Aue pavilion with drawings, and in the Museum Fridericianum with sculptures. “As an autodidact, she used the reduced, concrete formal language to sound out the existential dimensions of emptiness, the ephemeral and the silence. Her works, some of which have "sculptural" elements, are of great poetic charisma [...] "

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 1960: Adorno Decorações e Presentes, Rio de Janeiro
  • 1962: Galeria Selearte, São Paulo
  • 1963: Galeria São Luís, São Paulo
  • 1964: Galeria Aremar, Campinas
  • 1964: Galeria Astréia, São Paulo
  • 1965: Petite Galerie, Rio de Janeiro
  • 1966: Galeria Bucholz, Lisbon
  • 1967: Technical University, Stuttgart
  • 1968: Gramholt Galleri, Oslo
  • 1968: St. Stephan Gallerie, Vienna
  • 1969: Gallery at Minoritensaal, Graz
  • 1972: Galeria Ralph Camargo, São Paulo
  • 1973: American Cultural Institute, Washington
  • 1974: Gallery, Institute for Modernism, Nuremberg
  • 1975: Galeria Luiz Buarque de Holanda / Paulo Bittencourt, Rio de Janeiro
  • 1975: Study gallery, University of Stuttgart
  • 1978: Gabinete de Artes Gráficas, São Paulo
  • 1980: Galeria Cosme Velho, São Paulo
  • 1981: Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo
  • 1982: Paulo Figueiredo Galeria de Arte, São Paulo
  • 1983: Rio de Janeiro Galeria Thomas Cohn, Rio de Janeiro
  • 1983: Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo
  • 1984: Paulo Figueiredo Galeria de Arte, São Paulo
  • 1985: Paulo Figueiredo Galeria de Arte, São Paulo
  • 1987: Galeria Thomas Cohn, Rio de Janeiro
  • 1987: Paulo Figueiredo Galeria de Arte, São Paulo
  • 1987: Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo
  • 1987: Galeria Usina Arte, Vitória

Exhibitions

  • 2009: Dimensions of constructive art in Brazil , Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich
  • 2009: Adolpho Leirner Collection , Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
  • 2009: Leon Ferrari & Mira Schendel: Tangled Alphabets , Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 2011: Vibracion: modern art from Latin America , Museum of Art, Bonn

literature

  • Andrea Giunta, Luis Perez-Oramas: Leon Ferrari & Mira Schendel: Tangled Alphabets. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009, ISBN 978-087070750-6 .
  • Geraldo de Souza Dias: Mira Schendel: Art between metaphysics and corporeality. Galda + Wilch, Glienicke / Berlin, Cambridge / Mass. 2000, ISBN 3-93139732-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrea Giunta, Luis Perez-Oramas: Leon Ferrari & Mira Schendel: Tangled Alphabets , The Museum of Modern, New York, 2009, p. 170 ff
  2. ^ Philipp Meier , in: Südliche Spielarten , Neue Zürcher Zeitung of December 21, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Schendel, Mira
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hergesheimer, Mirra; Dub, Myrrah Dagmar (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian artist of concrete and scriptural art
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH July 24, 1988
Place of death São Paulo