Mira Schendel

Born in 1919, Zurich, Switzerland. In the late 1930s, Schendel began to study philosophy in Milan. Because of racial laws introduced in Fascist Italy in 1938, stripped of her Italian citizenship and forced to leave university, and so decided to flee Italy in 1939. During the war traveled through Switzerland and Austria spending the last years of the war in Sarajevo, she then returned to Italy, with her first husband Josep Hargesheimer, working for the International Refugee Organisation in Rome. In 1949 she emigrated and settled in Brazil. Her participation in the 1st International Biennial of São Paulo, in 1951, allowed her contact with international experiences and insertion in the national scene. Two years later he moves to São Paulo and adopts the surname Schendel. She went to work on minimalist and semiotic works which were included by the art critic Guy Brett at Signals Gallery in London in 1966. She continued to evolve in her work and mediums always drawn by the power of words and the minimal expressions of drawing and painting.  Recently, she's had numerous recognitions and retrospective exhibits, the most notable ones at MoMA NY and at TATE Modern London. 

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