Artist of the day

Saturday, February 28, 2026

Artist of the Day, February 28, 2026 : Myra Landau, a Romanian painter (#2492)

Myra Landau (1926 – 2018) was an artist and abstract painter involved in art research. Born in Bucharest, Romania, she was known largely for the work she made in Brazil, then Mexico for many years and later in Italy, Israel and The Netherlands.

Landau was born in Bucharest, Romania. At the age of 12, her Jewish family, fearing persecution by rising fascist forces, fled Romania just ahead of Ion Antonescu's coup d'état. After extensive travel throughout Europe, she finally arrived in Brazil. There, her great interest in artistic and intellectual life gave her the opportunity to meet painters like Di Cavalcanti, Antonio Dias, Wesley Duke Lee, Francisco Brennand, Antonio Dias and João Camara, the sculptor Sergio Camargo, the writer Jorge Amado and poet-musician-diplomat Vinicius de Morais, the musician-painter Dorival Caymmi.

Shy but determined, she started to paint. Her first works were figurative but gradually she began to realize that this was not her style and, influenced by Dufy, turned to Expressionism. She was greatly influenced by her uncle Marcel Janco (one of the founders of Dadaism) and the Brazilian engraver Oswaldo Goeldi. Critics, including Jorge A. Manrique who described her work as being "brutal and refined’ have recognized Landau's artistic contribution, describing it with high esteem.

Landau has lived in six countries. She married Miguel Salas Anzures, head of Fine Arts-INBA, Mexico. He broke with Socialist Realism, represented by painters like Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros. This new expression of art was called Generación de la Ruptura. The members of this generation of artists include native-born Mexicans and immigrants, many of whom were refugees from World War II.

Landau introduced a new technique of engraving on metal, utilizing acids, but printed from the surface, called Metal Relief. She had her first exhibition in Mexico in 1963 and gradually became one of the leading Latin American women artists. Her Metal Relief works were well received by art critic Paul Westheim in the important magazine El Nuevo Arte de los Metales and by art connoisseur, reviewer and historian Jorge Olvera. She continued her in-depth research and found her definitive expression in painting with pastel on raw linen. In this technique she was a pioneer. Her thematic approach was also new: she was the first Latin American abstract painter to use movements of free geometrical lines. All her works since 1965 are called Rhythms.

Landau had more than sixty individual exhibitions, the most important of which was held in 1987 in the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. She participated in 150 group exhibitions in Mexico, France, Italy, Brazil, Chile, the United States and Cuba.

In 1994, she moved from Mexico to Rome, Italy where she stayed until 2010 and later to Jerusalem, Israel where she lived for 6 years. Landau resided in The Netherlands for two years.

Politically, she was a vocal critic of the Israeli government and described herself as stateless: "I don't believe in borders, I don't like flags, I have no boundaries. My only homeland: friendship, love and justice for all."

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Myra Landau or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Ms. Myra Landau

Candelabros, 1953

Garrafas, 1954

Cavalete, 1955

Violão, 1956

Ritmo Nº.7, 1970

Ritmo continuo, 1971

Ritmo en M, 1971

Ritmo ascendente I, 1973

Ritmo carioca III, 1973

Ritmo triangular, 1974

Ritmo imprevisto, 1975

Ritmo lleno de misterio, 1975

Mural mobil 1, 1976

Ritmo V, 1977

Ritmo cortado, 1979

Ritmo dinamico, 1979

Ritmo que te vio verde, 1979

Untitled, 1979

Rimo de Ciudad Nueva, 1980

Ritmo transparente azul, 1981

Ritmo del futuro de America, 1982

Untitled, 1990

Untitled, 1995

Ritmo terremotato, 1996

Ritmo loquisimo, 2003

Ritmo di alghe, 2004

Ritmo azul I, 2005

Ritmo vagabondo, 2005

Ritmo partido, 2008

Ritmo transformado 1, 2009

Sombras y tierras de Israel, 2013

Untitled, 2017

Untitled, 2018

Friday, February 27, 2026

Artist of the Day, October 27, 2026 : Graciela Iturbide, a Mexican photographer (#2491)

Graciela Iturbide (1942) is a Mexican photographer. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in many major museum collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Iturbide was born in Mexico City, Mexico to traditional Catholic parents. The eldest of thirteen children, she attended Catholic school and was exposed to photography early on in life. Her father took pictures of her and her siblings, and she got her first camera when she was 11 years old. When she was a child, her father put all the photographs in a box; Iturbide later said: "it was a great treat to go to the box and look at these photos, these memories."

She married the architect Manuel Rocha Díaz in 1962 and had three children over the next eight years: sons Manuel and Mauricio, and a daughter, Claudia, who died at the age of six in 1970. Manuel is now a composer and sound artist and has lectured at California College of the Arts. Mauricio took after his father and became an architect.

In 1970 Iturbide turned to photography after the death of her six-year-old daughter Claudia. She studied at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México with the intention of becoming a film director. She realized how drawn she was to photography, which was Manuel Álvarez Bravo's area of expertise. He was a teacher at the university as well as a cinematographer, photographer, and subsequently became her mentor. She traveled with Bravo between 1970 and 1971 and learned that "there is always time for the pictures you want." In 1971 she was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant, and a scholarship at the Guggenheim College.

Iturbide photographs everyday life, almost entirely in black-and-white, following her curiosity and photographing when she sees what she likes. She was inspired by the photography of Josef Koudelka, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastião Salgado, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Her self-portraits especially reflect and showcase Bravo's influence and play with innovation and attention to detail. Iturbide eschews labels and calls herself complicit with her subjects. With her way of relating to those she is photographing, she is said to allow her subjects to come to life, producing poetic portraits. She became interested in the daily life of Mexico's indigenous cultures and people (the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Seri) and has photographed life in Mexico City, Juchitán, Oaxaca and on the Mexican-American border (La Frontera). With focus on identity, sexuality, festivals, rituals, daily life, death, and roles of women, Iturbide's photographs share visual stories of cultures in constant transitional periods. There's also juxtaposition within her images between urban vs rural life, and indigenous vs modern life. Iturbide's main concern has been the exploration and investigation of her own cultural environment. She uses photography as a way of understanding Mexico; combining indigenous practices, assimilated Catholic practices and foreign economic trade under one scope. Art critic, Oscar C. Nates, has described Iturbide's work as "anthropoetic."

In 1978, Iturbide was commissioned by the ethnographic archive of the National Indigenous Institute of Mexico to work on a series about Mexico's Seri Indians – a group of fishermen living in the Sonora desert along the Arizona/Mexico border. She was in Punta Chueca for a month and a half working on the series. There were about 500 people within the community. It was while working for this series that her photograph called "Mujer Ángel" was taken.

In 1979, Iturbide was asked by painter Francisco Toledo to photograph the Juchitán people who form part of the Zapotec culture native to Oaxaca, Mexico. It is traditionally a matriarchal society in which the women are economically, politically, and sexually independent. The women run the market, and men are not allowed to enter with the exception of gay men, whom they call "muxes" in the Zapotec language.

Iturbide created "Juchitan de Las Mujeres" series between the years of 1979 to 1989 when she became entranced with the women-centered community of the Zapotec Indians, located in the Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca; the most purely indigenous community in Mexico. Iturbide found these women's political, sexual, and economic freedom deeply inspiring.

Iturbide's method of documentation was not like the common distanced photographer. Instead, Iturbide took the time to get to know the women on a personal level. By doing so, Iturbide gained their trust and permission to photograph them. With their trust, Iturbide was invited to film many of their private celebrations and she became exposed to the Zapotec people through the eyes of the indigenous women.

Iturbide has also photographed Mexican-Americans in the White Fence (street gang) barrio of Eastside Los Angeles as part of the documentary book A Day in the Life of America (1987). She has worked in Argentina (in 1996), India (where she made her well-known photo, "Perros Perdidos" (Lost Dogs)), and the United States (an untitled collection of photos shot in Texas).

She is a founding member of the Mexican Council of Photography. She continues to live and work in Coyoacán, Mexico.

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Graciela Iturbide or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only