About the artist
Mira Schendel (born Myrrha Dagmar Dub in Zurich in 1919) was a painter, sculptress, and lyric poet. Born to a Jewish family in Switzerland and raised Catholic in Italy, she studied philosophy in Milan until she was forced to leave the university in 1939 due to her Jewishness. After stops in Sofia, Sarajevo, Milan, and Rome, she emigrated to Brazil in 1949 and settled in São Paulo in 1953. Shaped by her migration experiences and her particular interest in issues of philosophy, theology, and religious history, she developed a poetic oeuvre that posed existential questions and subverted the traditional hierarchy of genres. Schendel died in 1988 in São Paulo.