Fanny Rabel

Art Brokerage: Fanny Rabel Polish Artist: b. 1922-2008. Fanny Rabel (August 27, 1922 in Poland – November 25, 2008 in Mexico City), born Fanny Rabinovich,was a Polish-born Mexican artist who is considered to be the first modern female muralist and one of the youngest associated with the Mexican muralism of the early to mid 20th century. She and her family arrived to Mexico in 1938 from Europe and she studied art at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", where she met and became friends with Frida Kahlo. She became the only female member of “Los Fridos” a group of students under Kahlo’s tutelage. She also worked as an assistant and apprentice to Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, painting a number of murals of her own during her career. The most important of this is Ronda en el tiempo at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. She also created canvases and other works, with children often featured in her work and one of the first of her generation to work with ecological themes in a series of works begun in 1979. Her anti Nazi and anti Fascism politics resulted in her participation in a mural called Retrato de la Burguesía in1940 for the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas building on Alfonso Caso Street in Mexico City. Rabel met a group of exiled Spaniards in Mexico along with Antonio Pujol, who invited her to take part in a mural project headed by him, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Joseph Renau, Luis Arenal, Antonio Rodríguez Luna and Miguel Prieto. This work depicted, among other things, children killed by Nazi bombing in Spain. Rabel had her first exhibition of her work in 1945 with twenty four oils, thirteen drawings and eight engravings at the Liga Popular Israelita with Frida Kahlo writing the presentation. In 1955, she had an individual exhibition at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana. She had a large exhibition at the museum of the Palacio de Bellas Artes to commemorate a half century of her work. Her last exhibition was in 2007 at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. She is considered to be the first female muralist in Mexico. She was a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and the Taller de Gráfica Popular, joining both in 1950. Rabel is considered to be the first modern female muralist in Mexico although she also did significant work in painting, engraving, drawing and ceramic sculpture. Her work has been classes as poetic Surrealism, Neo-expressionism and is also considered part of the Escuela Mexicana de Pintura (the dominant art movement of the early to mid 20th century in Mexico) as one of the youngest muralists to be associated with it along with Arnold Belkin and José Hernández Delga. Listings wanted.