Anita Brenner

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Mexican-American transnational Jewish scholar and intellectual, who wrote extensively in English about the art, culture, and history of Mexico. She was born in Mexico, raised and educated in the U.S., and returned to Mexico in the 1920s following the Mexican Revolution. She coined the term 'Mexican Renaissance', "to describe the cultural florescence [that] emerged from the revolution." As a child of immigrants, Brenner's heritage caused her to experience both antisemitism and acceptance. Fleeing discrimination in Texas, she found mentors and colleagues among the European Jewish diaspora living in both Mexico and New York, but Mexico, not the US or Europe, held her loyalty and enduring interest. She was part of the post-Revolutionary art movement known for its indigenista ideology. Brenner earned a PhD in anthropology at Columbia University and her first book, Idols Behind Altars was the first book to document the artworks, styles and artists of Mexico from Prehistory through the 1920s. It was widely considered her most important work and was filled with photographs by renowned photographers and interviews with the most influential and prolific artists of the period. Her fourth published book was The Wind That Swept Mexico; The History of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1942, having in between printed a guidebook and a children's story. The first book to give a complete account in either English or Spanish on the Mexican Revolution, it was the first to retell the events from a Mexican perspective. She died in Ojuelos de Jalisco, 83 km east of Aguascalientes, in an automobile accident on 1 December 1974, aged 69. Link to Wikipedia biography