36 Facts About Anita Brenner

Anita Brenner was born in Mexico, and raised and educated in the United States.

Anita Brenner returned to Mexico in the 1920s following the Mexican Revolution.

Anita Brenner was part of the post-Revolutionary art movement known for its indigenista ideology.

Anita 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.

Anita Brenner was born 13 August 1905 in Aguascalientes, Mexico, to Isador and Paula Brenner.

Anita Brenner's parents were Jewish emigrants to Mexico from Latvia, and her father moved his family back and forth from Mexico to Texas during the Mexican Revolution.

In 1916, when Anita Brenner was 11, the family settled in San Antonio, Texas, but Anita Brenner's nanny influenced her enduring passion for Mexico.

Anita Brenner briefly attended Our Lady of the Lake University and then took an English course with J Frank Dobie at the University of Texas at Austin.

Anita Brenner moved to Mexico around the age of 18 and settled in Mexico City.

Anita Brenner became an important member of this cosmopolitan circle and was an important link among them.

Anita Brenner was an important voice for bringing the Mexican artistic florescence to the attention of readers in the US, effectively representing it north of the Mexican border.

Anita Brenner worked for a brief period at B'nai B'rith, meeting recent Jewish immigrants at the port of Veracruz and helping them with their paperwork and resettlement.

Anita Brenner quickly became part of the leftist bohemian group and as a journalist was a key voice in the indigenismo movement.

Carleton Beals and Ernest Gruening were influential US journalists whom Anita Brenner met in this early period of her career.

Anita Brenner was Gruening's research assistant for his book, Mexico and Its Heritage, which he spent five years developing in Mexico before it was published in 1928.

Concha Michel, a friend of Anita Brenner's, participated in a similar program and gathered indigenous folk songs.

In 1926, Anita Brenner commissioned her friends Tina Modotti and Edward Weston to travel with her and take photographs for her upcoming book on Mexican decorative arts.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico provided funding for a two-volume series in which Anita Brenner planned to document artworks in Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, Oaxaca, Puebla and Queretaro.

In 1927, Anita Brenner left Mexico for New York to attend Columbia University.

Anita Brenner had served as translator and editor for Manuel Gamio, a leading Mexican anthropologist, and was encouraged to pursue a doctorate by Franz Boas, the "founding father of American anthropology".

Anita Brenner introduced Jose Clemente Orozco to Alma Reed, who helped plan his first New York showing and guided his career.

Anita Brenner wrote reviews and helped with the translation of Mariano Azuela's The Underdogs, which sold 3,000 copies.

Anita Brenner promoted the work of Diego Rivera, though they at times had a contentious relationship, as well as Carlos Merida and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

In 1926 when the journal New Masses was launched, Anita Brenner was classed as a fellow traveler, but not a party member.

Anita Brenner found evidence that the Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie, the Russian secret police, intimidated anarchists and socialists in an effort to silence critics of the Comintern and she criticized Stalin's move away from helping workers and into Marxist factionalism.

Anita Brenner responded in an individual letter stating that the role of the intellectual was to question and criticize.

Anita Brenner occasionally wrote under a pseudonym "Jean Mendez" for Troskyist newspapers.

In 1936, it was Anita Brenner who sent a telegram from New York to Diego Rivera asking him to use his influence to find Leon Trotsky a safe haven in Mexico.

Anita Brenner re-established it for specialty agricultural produce and grew asparagus and garlic.

Anita Brenner continued to publish in the US and renewed her lifelong friendship with Jean Charlot to collaborate on several children's books.

Anita Brenner defended Mexico's right to determine its own path without foreign intervention.

Anita Brenner did accept a citation as a distinguished tourism pioneer awarded by former president Miguel Aleman Valdes in 1967.

In July 1930, Anita Brenner married David Glusker, from whom she separated in 1951, ten years prior to his death in 1961.

Anita Brenner had two children, a daughter, Dr Susannah Joel Glusker, who taught at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, and a son, Dr Peter Glusker, a physician who had a medical practice in Fort Bragg, California.

Anita Brenner died in Ojuelos de Jalisco, 83 kilometres east of Aguascalientes, in an automobile accident on 1 December 1974, aged 69.

Anita Brenner remains an important figure in post-Revolutionary art and history in Mexico, an enthusiast for Mexican art and culture and an active advocate for its importance to a US audience.