Yampolsky, Mariana
Artist name
Yampolsky, Mariana
Birth date
1925
Death date
2002
Biography
Mariana Yampolsky was born in Chicago in 1925 to a Russian father and German mother. She moved to Mexico City at the age of 19 to work with the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Workshop for Popular Graphic Art) or TGP, a left-wing organisation of graphic artists, founded by Leopoldo Méndez, and others, in 1937. (ESCALA has 10 works by the TGP, from the series Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana (Engravings of the Mexican Revolution), originally made in 1947.)
Yampolsky left the TGP in 1960 to concentrate on photography, which she had studied under Lola Alvarez Bravo. She travelled throughout Mexico taking images of the country's rural population, its indigenous people and its architecture. During her life she built an archive of more than 70,000 images, which she grouped thematically. The photograph held byESCALA, Desde que te ausentaste, belongs to a series of images of traditional funerary practices.
Joanne Harwood
