Mira Schendel was a Brazilian artist who represented the contemporary art movement. She worked in different art fields such as painting, poetry and sculpture. The artist’s pieces of art are often made in an asymmetric way with a great attention to the materials.
Background
Mira Schendel was born as Myrrha Dagmar Dub on June 7, 1919 in Zurich, Switzerland. She was a daughter of Karl Leo Dub, a fabric merchant, and Ada Saveria Büttner, a milliner. Having Jewish roots, Mira was baptized as a Roman Catholic according to her mother’s wish.
When Schendel was three-year old, her parents divorced. In 1937, her mother married Count Tommaso Gnoli.
Mira spent her childhood in Rome and Milan raised by her mother.
Education
Mira Schendel received her first drawing lessons in Milan.Then, at the end of 1930s, Schendel entered the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy where she had studied philosophy until 1938 when she was forced to leave the institution as Jewish according to the racial policy of the Fascist Italy.
Mira Schendel began her artistic career in Brazil at the end of 1940s where she had come in 1939. She started to create her asymmetric paintings, including landscapes, still lifes, house interiors reflecting her territorial and linguistic instability. It was there, in Brazil, where the artist received a great acclaim and developed her artistic mindset.
The most important works, such as Droguinhas (Little Nothings), Trenzinho (Little Train), and the Objetos graficos (Graphic objects) were produced during 1960 when the artist used rice paper as canvas for her monotype drawings and began to incorporate in them various phrases and words from the languages she spoked – Italian, German and Portuguese, as well as some French, English, Croat and Czech terms. In one year Schendel created about two hundred pictures some of which were presented at the São Paulo Bienal of 1965.
This Bienal was followed by many others, including this one of 1969 for which Schendel created an installation made from a thin nylon cotton and an acrylic sheet with text on it, called ‘Still waves of probability – Old Testament, I Kings 19’’.
Other important exhibitions of Mira Schendel’s artworks include the Venice Biennale of 1968, a solo show at the Galeria de Arte SESI in São Paulo (1997), Tangled Alphabets with León Ferrari at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009) and at the Tate Modern art gallery in London in 2014. Three latter were organized after the artist’s death.
Quotations:
'The sensory element of the brushstroke, the texture, is always there; for me this is very important. I would never make a completely smooth painting.'
'I would say the line, often, just stimulates the void. […] what matters in my work is the void, actively the void."
Personality
According to the memories of her daughter, Ada Clara Schendel, Mira Schendel was an intellectual person. She was fascinated by philosophy and by the theological questions.
Schendel’s favourite work place was her kitchen. In fact, the artist was somehow a couch potato and she appreciated a lot the cleanness at home.
This perseverance at the household was characteristic for her artistic activity as well. So, the artist could work on the one project day and night almost without rests, completely consumed with it. After finishing, Schendel dropped the art for weeks or even months.
Quotes from others about the person
"She’s a myth in São Paulo; she’s an artist’s artist." Rodrigo Moura, an art critic
'She was not a very social person – she never was. She had just a few contacts with very specific persons, but very intense, all the time – all-night-long conversations." Ada Clara Schendel, Mira Schendel's daughter
'She can wash and iron clothes perfectly. All her underwear: white and perfect. She was very delicate in these things.' Ada Clara Schendel, Mira Schendel's daughter
"All her life was painful. The relationships – with me and the lovers and the friends – it was ever difficult. And she doesn’t believe in a happy life, full of joy. That’s like a Barbie doll: it’s fake." Ada Clara Schendel, Mira Schendel's daughter
"[Mira] was interested in geometric abstraction, but the abstraction in her work is a different kind. She is offering an alternate paradigm; she establishes an alternative line, to do with being and ontology, through a minimal, precarious gesture – a kind of softness… A slight gesture can be powerful." Tanya Barson, an art curator
Interests
science, occidental philosophy, oriental philosophy, history of religions
Connections
Mira Schendel was married twice. Her first husband, who she met in Sarajevo, became a Croatian Josep Hargesheimer on April 19, 1941. The couple immigrated to Brazil where they had lived together for eleven years.
After the break-off, Mira settled down in São Paulo where she got acquinted with Knut Schendel, bookshop owner. Schendel married him on March 17, 1960, three years after the birth of their daughter, Ada Clara Schendel. The couple lived together till the end of Mira Schendel’s life.