Fayga Ostrower

Biography

Fayga Ostrower was born Fayga Perla Krakowski to a Jewish family at Łódź. In 1921 the family moved to Elberfeld and Barmen in Germany, where Ostrower attended primary and secondary schools. In the early 1930s, following difficulties with the German authorities, the family sought refuge in Belgium, and emigrated to Brazil in 1934, where they took up residence in Nilópolis. Ostrower began work as a secretary while studying art at the Fine Arts Association, and in 1946 attended design classes at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation’s Brazilian Society of Fine and Graphic Arts, where she studied metal and wood engraving, and art history, with tutors Axel Leskoschek, Tomás Santa Rosa, Carlos Oswald and Anna Levy. In 1955 she spent a year in New York through a Fulbright Scholarship, engraving under the tutelage of Stanley Hayter.

Ostrower exhibited and won prizes in the international Art Biennials of São Paulo (1951 to 1967), Venice (1958 and 1962) and Mexico (1960).

In 2002 the Fayga Ostrower Institute was founded in Rio de Janeiro in memory of Ostrower, to house her works and documents, and to provide for creative, fine art and interdisciplinary study.

In 1941 Ostrower married marxist activist Heinz Ostrower, both becoming naturalized in 1951. They had a son Carl Robert (b. 1949), and daughter Anna Leonor (b. 1952).

Teaching

Between 1954 and 1970 Ostrower lectured in Composition and Critical Analysis at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. In the 1960s she taught at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and in 1964 at Spelman College, Atlanta. Subsequently she held posts within postgraduate programmes within various Brazilian universities. Consecutively she developed art courses for workers and community centres, and gave lectures at various cultural institutions.

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