Raquel Rabinovich

Her work is included in numerous museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Rabinovich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 30, 1929, to Russian and Romanian Jewish parents. She grew up in Córdoba. From 1950 to 1952 she studied at the University of Córdoba. Some of her earliest influences were Argentine artists Héctor Basaldúa, Vicente Forte and Ernesto Farina, whose studios Rabinovich would visit. She would go on to study art under Farina in Cordoba. In the late 1950s she spent six years in Europe, studying art history at the Sorbonne and studio art with Andre Lhote. In 1956 Rabinovich married fellow Argentine Jose Luis Reissig and had three children together; they divorced in 1980. After many years apart, they resumed their partnership in 1987. She returned to Argentina in the early 1960s, where she initiated a period of contemplation and reflection that led to a series of paintings titled The Dark is Light Enough. These works were exhibited in Buenos Aires in 1963. The series marked the beginning of her lifelong investigation into the nature of existence through the exploration of what she called the "dark source". The dark source, for Rabinovich embodies the concealed aspects of existence that seem to be invisible, which are behind the appearance of things, thoughts, language, and the world. Due to a military coup in Argentina in 1966, she moved to the United States in 1967 with her family and became an American citizen in 1973. In the early 70s Rabinovich had a dream in which her paintings became transparent and free-standing, so she began creating sculptures using glass. These were first exhibited in 1973. In 1979 she visited Machu Picchu. She stayed in the ruins overnight and before dawn Machu Picchu disappeared from view, then very slowly appeared, as the clouds lifted in the morning. Many years later, influenced by this experience she would create stone sculptural installations Emergences along the shores of the Hudson River. Like Machu Picchu, these stone sculptures also disappear from view and gradually emerge into view, only this time the stones are concealed by the tides. In 1987, her fascination with ancient cultures took her to Egypt, India, Nepal, Indonesia, and Thailand. These travels had a profound impact on her work. Rabinovich died at her home in Rhinebeck, New York, on January 5, 2025, after being recently diagnosed with cancer. She was 95. • Illustration — Raquel Rabinovich, "Untitled Relief into Handmade Paper 13," 1988. • Illustration — Raquel Rabinovich, "River Library 395 with Footnotes," 2012–14.

Rabinovich's work has been presented in several exhibitions including: • Raquel Rabinovich: The Reading Room (Thompson Memorial Library, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY 2018). • Thresholds, (Y Gallery, New York City, 2017). • River Library (Fundacion Alon, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2008). • River Library ("Imaging the River", Group exhibition, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY 2003–04). • Raquel Rabinovich (Galeria Jaime Conci, Cordoba, Argentina, 1990). • Beyond the Surface: Raquel Rabinovich, Recent Work (American Society, New York, curated by Fatima Bercht). • Cloister, Crossing, Passageway, 1.32 (CUNY Graduate Center Mall, NYC 1978 and The Jewish Museum Sculpture Court, NYC, 1979).