Mira Schendel

1 - 31 December 2020
  • 'No matter how much I use elemental forms, the sensory element of the brushstroke, the texture, is always there; for...

    "No matter how much I use elemental forms, 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."

     

    - Mira Schendel

  • Mira Schendel (b. 1919 Zürich, Switzerland - d. 1988 São Paulo, Brazil) lived in Milan and Rome before moving to Brazil in 1949. She settled in São Paolo in 1953, where she married Knut Schendel, and where she lived and worked until her death in 1988. Schendel is considered one of the most important and influential Latin American artists of the twentieth century.

    • MIRA SCHENDEL, Composição Laranja, 1986
      MIRA SCHENDEL, Composição Laranja, 1986
    • MIRA SCHENDEL, Untitled, c. Early 1960s
      MIRA SCHENDEL, Untitled, c. Early 1960s
  • 'asymmetry is one of the great lessons of the people from the East... I think the West has always understood...
    MIRA SCHENDEL, UNTITLED, 1964

    "asymmetry is one of the great lessons of the people from the East... I think the West has always understood symmetry better. It is rare for a drawing of mine to be symmetrical. In general, intuitively, I run from symmetry. "

     

    - Mira Schendel

    • MIRA SCHENDEL, Untitled (Mandalas series), c.1970s
      MIRA SCHENDEL, Untitled (Mandalas series), c.1970s
    • MIRA SCHENDEL, Untitled, 1965
      MIRA SCHENDEL, Untitled, 1965
  • While having contributed to the Concretist and Neoconcretist movements that stormed the Brazilian avant-garde, she was never associated with a single movement but her work contained elements of Letterism, Color Field painting and early conceptual art. Schendel’s early experience of cultural, geographic and linguistic displacement is evident in her work, as is her interest in religion and philosophy.

     

    Tate Modern in London staged the first international full retrospective of her work in 2013.