Raquel Rabinovich, best known for her monochromatic paintings and glass sculptures, has died. She was 95.
Rabinovich’s death was announced by the Raquel Rabinovich Art Trust, which revealed that the artist died peacefully on January 5 after a short battle with cancer.
“She leaves behind a rich legacy as a visual artist built over more than seven decades of rigorous practice,” the trust said in its emailed statement. “She was very loved by her family and friends who were with her until the very end.”
Rabinovich “never subscribed to specific movements or trends” in the art world, said the trust. Indeed, over a storied career, her works ranged from hard-edge abstraction to film and land art.
Raquel Rabinovich in her Rhinebeck, New York studio in 2024. Photo courtesy of the Raquel Rabinovich Art Trust.
The artist was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1929 into a Russian and Romanian Jewish immigrant family. She attended school at Universidad de Córdoba in Argentina before studying at the Atelier André Lhote and La Sorbonne in Paris, France, followed by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Rabinovich had lived and worked in the United States since 1967 and resided for the last 30 years in Rhinebeck, New York, where she was an active member of the Hudson Valley artistic and Buddhist communities.
After landing in the United States, Rabinovich’s first artistic break came with a group show titled “4 Argentine Artists Living in New York” at the Caravan House Gallery. Her work has since been shown in dozens of exhibitions, from Buenos Aires to Barcelona, including exhibitions dedicated to celebrating the “pioneers of abstract art.”
Through the 1970s and ’80s, Rabinovich would hone her monochromatic surfaces in such series as “Dimension Five” and “Chhodrtens.” In them, she lent texture and a visual language to an ancient darkness, pairing them with her love for poetry and written works by authors such as Jorge Luis Borges.
“To me, when I see something—say, the world around me, art, or people—I realize that’s not all there is,” she said in 2021. “There is something behind, something beyond. Because it’s not obvious or visible, I feel inclined to explore it and discover what is there.”
Most recently, Rabinovich had a solo show at the Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary gallery in New York in 2024, titled “Raquel Rabinovich: AVATARS.”
Her work is held in the collections of institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Washington, D.C., and, in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her site-specific sculptural installations can be found across the Hudson River Valley in art communities like Nyack and Beacon.
Still, her supporters have said the painter had to fight for the recognition due to her. “She is an artist who has been active throughout her stay in America but has not received the full recognition she deserves,” Johnathan Goodman wrote in a review of her 2021 solo show “Raquel Rabinovich: Portals” for the Brooklyn Rail.