Aurora Mira Mena (1863–1939) was a Chilean

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

. Together with her elder sister Magdalena, she was one of the earliest recognized female painters not only in Chile but in the whole of

Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...

. She was also one of the first women to graduate from the

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

School of Painting.

Biography

Born in

in 1863, Mira was the daughter of the painter Gregorio Mira Iñiguez and his wife Mercedes Mena Alviz. Raised in a well-to-do environment, she was introduced to painting by her father who had studied under the French painter

Raymond Monvoisin '' 200px, Portrait of Andrés Bello '' Raymond Auguste Quinsac Monvoisin (May 31, 1790 – March 26, 1870) was a French artist and painter. Biography Monvoisin was born in Bordeaux. Although he initiated a career in the military by indication o ...

, the first director of the Chilean School of Painting. She went on to study under the school's third director Juan Mochi at a time when it was quite unusual for women to undertake formal art studies. In contrast to her sister who specialized in

portrait painting Portrait painting is a Hierarchy of genres, genre in painting, where the intent is to represent a specific human subject. The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists may create their work by commissio ...

, Aurora Mira concentrated on

still-life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or human-made (drinking glasses, books, ...

s, especially flowers and fruit. Chilean society was even more taken aback when the two sisters began to exhibit in the salon of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1884 under

José Manuel Balmaceda José Manuel Emiliano Balmaceda Fernández (; July 19, 1840 – September 19, 1891) served as the 10th President of Chile from September 18, 1886, to August 29, 1891. Balmaceda was part of the Castilian-Basque aristocracy in Chile. While h ...

's presidency. Competing with such established artists as

Pedro Lira Pedro Francisco Lira Rencoret (17 May 1845, Santiago – 20 April 1912, Santiago) was a Chilean painter and art critic, who organized exhibitions that led to the establishment of the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts. He is best known for h ...

Juan Francisco González Juan Francisco González Escobar (Santiago, Chile, September 25, 1853 – Santiago, March 4, 1933) is known as one of the four Great Chilean Masters and as the archetypal romantic bohemian artist of the early 20th century. He was the most pr ...

and

Alfredo Valenzuela Puelma Alfredo Valenzuela Puelma ( Valparaiso, 8 February 1856 – Villejuif, France, 27 October 1909), was one of Chile's best-known painters and one of the four artists known as the Great Chilean Masters. Biography He showed a talent and i ...

, Magdalena was awarded the Gold Medal while Aurora received the Silver Medal. Aurora Mira exhibited her paintings at the Salón Oficial from 1884 to 1897. Her works can be seen in the collections of Chile's Museo National de Bellas Artes, the Museo de Arte y Artesanía de Linares and in the Pinacoteca Banco de Chile, Santiago. Aurora Mira died in 1939 in Santiago.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mira, Aurora 1863 births 1939 deaths 19th-century Chilean painters 19th-century women painters 20th-century Chilean painters 20th-century Chilean women artists Artists from Santiago, Chile Sibling artists

Biography

See also

References