Yente’s Jewish Works

Eugenia Crenovich (1905-1990), known as Yente, was the first abstract woman artist in Argentina. She has become famous for her abstract paintings, but she created many figurative works throughout her career. There are family portraits, illustrated books, and other paintings she produced simultaneously to the abstract works.

Yente was married to the Argentine artist Juan del Prete. In 2009 Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires held a large exhibition titled “Yente/Pati.” And recently, the MoMA in New York acquired two works by the Argentine Jewish artist, now exhibited permanently in the same room as Mondrian and Torres Garcia. Her otherness as a woman artist and a Latin American artist has already been the subject in these exhibitions.

It is also possible to identify some nuances to her Jewish heritage and her Jewish experiences, in many of her less known figurative works, like José en Egipto (Joseph in Egipt), Septem Dies, and Los Macabeos (The Maccabees), and some family portraits.

This paper analyses a selection of illustrated books and paintings by Yente, in light of her Jewish experience. I suggest a new perspective to study her works and how she expressed different aspects of her Jewish secular experience in her oeuvre.

This research is part of a future traveling exhibition about Yente´s Jewish works. It is being held in Buenos Aires, based on a close analysis of the paintings and illustrated books, the artist´s archive in the Estate of Eugenia Crenovich, and oral testimony from family and friends, apart from other archival primary and secondary resources available in archives available in Argentina.