Fayga Ostrower

Fayga Perla Ostrower (née Krakowski; 14 September 1920, Łódź — 13 September 2001, Rio de Janeiro) was a Polish-Brazilian engraver, painter, designer, illustrator, art theorist and university professor.

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).

Selected exhibitions

Joint 1951 to 1967 – São Paulo Biennial 1957 – Modern Art in Brazil (Buenos Aires, Rosário, Santiago, Lima) 1958 and 1962 – Venice Biennial 1960 – Mexico Biennial 1960 – Certame Latin American Engraving Exhibition, Buenos Aires 1965 – Contemporary Brazilian Art (London, Vienna, Bonn) 1965 – Contemporary Brazilian Engravers (Cornell University) 2012 – Centro Cultural Rio de Janeiro: Diálogos

Solo 1955 – Pan-American Union, Washington 1957 – San Francisco Fine Arts Museum 1959 – Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1960 – Art Institute of Chicago 2011–12 – Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo

Collections Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo Institute of Contemporary Arts, London Victoria and Albert Museum, London Albertina Museum, Vienna Museum of Modern Art, New York Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia Library of Congress, Washington Art Institute of Chicago Fayga Ostrower Institute, Rio de Janeiro Museu de Arte Moderna, Lodz

Organisational involvement 1963 to 1966 – President of the Associação Brasileira de Artes Plásticas (Brazilian Association of Arts) 1978 to 1988 – Director of the Brazilian committee of Unesco's International Society of Education Through Art (INSEA) Honorary Member of the Academy of Art and Design, Florence 1982 to 1988 – member of the Conselho Estadual de Cultura (Cultural Board of Rio de Janeiro State)

Honours 1972 – Order of Rio Branco Award 1998 – Order of Cultural Merit (Brazil) 1999 – Grande Prêmio de Artes Plásticas (Grand National Art Prize – Ministério da Cultura do Brasil)