The Brazilian art critic Sheila Leirner considers the scope of the exhibition by Mary Dritschel, the U.S. artist with a show at the Luisa Strina gallery in São Paulo: Da Caixa à Flor. The artist’s work was a contemporary example of “consciousness raising” (on the part of women) about women’s specific characteristics, including both sexual identities and sensitivities. To Leirner, that theme would come to be part of a certain type of artwork by women artists that would focus on the situation of women during that period. Moreover, the study of human anatomy was always guided by the idea that the body was a reflection of the divine. However, it was in the Modern art era that the female body (in particular) came to be seen as a subject of visual art. In this regard, in the critic’s opinion, Dritschel’s work investigates all kinds of myths linked to the female body, while working within a highly sophisticated, contemporary perspective. 

The U.S. artist Mary Dritschel lived in São Paulo from 1978 to 1986, supported by a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation. During that time, she taught courses at the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA-USP) and participated in biennials. The interest of Sheila Leirner (b. 1948) in her work involves a concern for women’s issues in art, discussed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when there was also an ongoing international debate about Modern art. Another reference to art history (with a feminist orientation) can be found in an article by Linda Nochlin mentioned by Leirner in her essay “Arte feminina e feminismo” [see doc. no. 1111363]. Subsequently, in “Mary Dritschel II” (1981) [doc. no. 1111362">1111362], Leirner considered the work shown in another exhibition by this U.S. artist in the capital of São Paulo: Interior Reliefs, at the same gallery.

As a journalist and art critic, the French Brazilian Sheila Leirner (b. 1948) was a member of the Conselho de Arte e Cultura da Bienal in 1982−83, and came to be the chief curator of two biennials in that period: the 18th (1985) and the 19th (1987). After studying the sociology of art in France, Leirner became an art critic for the daily newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in 1975. She published a collection of her essays under the title Arte e seu tempo (São Paulo: Editôra Perspectiva, 1991), a book in which she began to set a priority on what she called “new art.” That was also the year Leirner returned to Paris, where she worked and specialized as an arts administrator. She represented the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Latin America (1993−99), and became a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) (French division). Leirner has contributed to countless journals and supplements in both countries, including Beaux-Arts Magazine, Europe Magazine Littéraire, Revista da USP, and Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira. She was also on the scholarship committee for UNESCO-Aschberg.

There is a text in which Leirner analyzes the artwork produced in the 1970s and 1980s in Brazil, in the midst of pluralism in international art, entitled “Brasil: uma nova arte” [doc. no. 1110940],  as well as the aforementioned critical piece “Mary Dritschel II” [doc. no. 1111362">1111362], written on the exhibition Interior Reliefs. Along with the article covered here, these texts were subsequently added to her book Arte como medida: críticas selecionadas (São Paulo, Editora Perspectiva, 1982).