Raquel Partnoy (born 1932 in

Rosario, Santa Fe Rosario () is the largest city in the central provinces of Argentina, Argentine province of Santa Fe Province, Santa Fe. The city, located northwest of Buenos Aires on the west bank of the Paraná River, is the third-most populous city in the ...

) is an

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

painter, poet, and essayist.

Biography

She studied at an art school in that city but it was after she got married and moved to the southern port city of

Bahía Blanca Bahía Blanca (; English: ''White Bay''), colloquially referred to by its own local inhabitants as simply Bahía, is a city in the Buenos Aires Province, Buenos Aires province of Argentina, centered on the northwestern end of the eponymous Blanc ...

in 1954, that she attended for several years the Buenos Aires's workshop of the influential Argentine painter and teacher Demetrio Urruchú

Partnoy's first show was at Van Riel Gallery in 1965, and she continued to paint and held exhibitions at diverse venues in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

and other cities of her country until 1994 when she moved to the United States. She settled in

Washington D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

where she continued her artistic career. At the invitation of the Embassy of Argentina in Washington, D.C. Partnoy exhibited her series “Women of the Tango” and “Tango: Inner Landscapes” in 1997 and 2003, where she portrayed stories found in

tango Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries from a combination of Arge ...

lyrics such of those of young women who were discriminated against and mistreated by society. She has also had solo exhibits at the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum,

Goucher College Goucher College ( ') is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1885 as a Nonsectarian, nonsecterian Women's colleges in the United States, ...

, and Washington's Studio Galler

Through her series of paintings “Surviving Genocide,” which was shown at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in 2003, Partnoy depicted her family experiences during the military

dictatorship A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no Limited government, limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, ...

in Argentina (1976–1983) when 30,000 persons

disappeared An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with the intent of placing ...

and were eventually killed by

state terrorism State terrorism is terrorism conducted by a state against its own citizens or another state's citizens. It contrasts with '' state-sponsored terrorism'', in which a violent non-state actor conducts an act of terror under sponsorship of a state. ...

. On January 12, 1977, her daughter Alicia Partnoy was kidnapped by the Army and disappeared for three and a half months. During this time they kept her in the

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

La Escuelita in Bahía Blanca. She was imprisoned for a total of three yearsPartnoy, Raquel. “The Silent Witness." in ''Women Writing Resistance: essays on Latin America and the Caribbean.'' Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, Ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2005. in other jails. Both Raquel Partnoy's essay on “Surviving Genocide” and the images of her paintings on this subject, were published in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin American and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory, Kristin Ruggiero, ed. Sussex Academic Press, UK, 200

She is the illustrator of ''The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival,'' written by her daughter Alicia Partnoy.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Partnoy, Raquel 1932 births Living people 20th-century Argentine painters 21st-century Argentine women artists Argentine women poets Artists from Rosario, Santa Fe Jewish women painters Jewish painters Argentine Jews 20th-century Argentine women painters