Mira Schendel

Myrrha Dagmar Dub (Zurich, Switzerland, 1919 – São Paulo 1988). Designer, painter, sculptor. She has moved to Milan, Italy, in the 1930s, where she studied art and philosophy. She quits her studies during World War II (1939-1945). She settled in Rome in 1946, and in 1949 she was granted permission to move to Brazil. She lives in Porto Alegre, where she works with graphic design, does painting, ceramic sculpture, poems and restoration of baroque images, signing with her married name Mira Hargesheimer. Her participation in the 1st International Biennial of São Paulo, in 1951, allows contact with international experiences and insertion in the national scene. Two years later she moved to São Paulo and adopted the surname Schendel.
In the 1960s she made drawings on rice paper. In 1966, she created the series Droguinhas, made of twisted rice paper, which is presented in London at the Signals Gallery by art critic Guy Brett. In that year, she passes through Milan, Venice, Lisbon and Sttutgart. She knows the philosopher and semiologist Max Bense (1910 – 1990), who contributes to the exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, and is the catalog’s writer. In 1968 she started producing works using acrylic, such as Objects Graphics and Toquinhos. Between 1970 and 1971, she made a set of 150 notebooks, deployed in several series.
In the 1980s, she produced the white and black tempers, the Sarrafos and started a series of paintings with brick dust. After her death, many exhibitions present her work inside and outside Brazil, and in 1994, the 22nd International Biennial of São Paulo gave her a special room. In 1997, the art dealer Paulo Figueiredo donated a large number of works by the artist to the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo – MAM / SP.