Isobel Whitelegg ///

MIRA SCHENDEL, ONTOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE

I cannot tell you about my painting. It is not ‘abstract’, but it is abstract in the sense that I believe all of art is.

When, in 1952, Brazilian artist Mira Schendel (b. Zurich, 1919, d. São Paulo, 1988) made the above comment regarding the manner in which she considered her painting to be abstract (but not ‘abstract’), she was living in Porto Alegre, and producing still life, landscape and portraiture thickly painted in oils on canvas or board. She had had her first solo exhibition since arriving in Brazil in 1949, and in 1951 one of her paintings, titled ‘paisagem’ (landscape) had been accepted for exhibition at the first São Paulo Bienal. Following her move to São Paulo in 1953, her painting came closer to ‘abstraction’ in inverted commas. Certain of her works do closely approximate the geometric-abstract language of Concretist art, prevalent within the São Paulo at this time.