Born: 1895 Kovno, Russian Empire (now Kaunas, Lithuania)
Died: 1975 Rome, Italy
Year of Migration to the UK: 1905
Other name/s: Anetta Raphael, Antonietta Raphael, Antonietta Raphael Mafai, Antonietta Raphaël Mafai, Antonietta Raphael de Simon, Antonietta Raphaël de Simon
Biography
Sculptor and painter Antonietta Raphaël was born into a Jewish family in Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1895, the only daughter and last of the fourteen children of Rabbi Simon Raphaël and his wife Katia Horowitz. Following her father’s death, the family’s precarious finances and growing anti-Semitism, she immigrated to London with her mother in 1905, where they were reunited with her brothers, who had already established themselves as tailors in the Jewish quarter in the East End. Known in England as Annetta Raphael, she earned her living as a dressmaker, also teaching piano and violin and attending the Royal Academy of Music part-time; after graduating, she also taught solfège (aural skills, pitch and sight-reading) in the East End. A frequent visitor to the British Museum, Raphael became fascinated by Egyptian sculpture, taking evening art classes and making her first drawings around 1918. She also mixed in artistic and literary Jewish circles, which included immigrant sculptors Jacob Epstein and Ossip Zadkine; she was particularly close to her neighbour, 'Whitechapel Boy' painter-poet Isaac Rosenberg, with whom she may have had a youthful love affair around 1913.
In 1919, following the death of her mother, she left London, travelling first to Paris, where she remained until 1924, and eventually settling in Rome a year later (where she became known as Antonietta Raphael). She entered the Roman Academy of Fine Arts in 1925, meeting the Italian painter Mario Mafai (1902–1965), with whom she started a lifelong relationship (they married in 1935). At that time, Mafai shared his studio in Via Cavour with the painter, Gino Bonichi, known as ‘Scipione’, and the three artists soon formed a group, which the prominent art critic Roberto Longhi referred to as the ‘School of Via Cavour’, characterised by the bright palette and warm tones which would later define the so-called Scuola Romana (School of Rome), which Raphaël also co-founded. Drawing on memories of her Jewish heritage, her painting was expressionist in manner and employed rich Fauvist colouring. Between 1925 and 1932, Mussolini's Fascist dictatorship legally and financially controlled art exhibitions, creating a national, centralised and state-run system, under which Raphael exhibited for the first time in Rome in 1929 in both a well-received group exhibition of work by women artists Otto pittrici e scultrici romance and at the first Exhibition of the Fascist Syndicate of the Fine Arts. In 1930 she moved back to Paris with Mafai, where her interest in sculpture flourished and from then on she devoted herself mainly to this medium. Between 1931 and 1932 she returned to London, where, in August 1931, she painted Yom Kippur in the Synagogue (Private Collection), depicting the synagogue on Whitechapel Road, writing to Mafai: ‘I wish you were here to advise me because it’s all about the perspective of the interior and heads, heads, heads, heads [...] I can tell you that if it’s a failure, I’ll have learnt a lot in any case’. Epstein encouraged her experiments with sculpture and also tried unsuccessfully to secure an exhibition of her works at the prestigious Redfern Gallery, in anticipation of which, Mafai sent 40 of her paintings to London, including those from her 1929 Rome exhibition and many others painted in Paris, all of which were later lost during the Second World War (probably during the Blitz).
In 1934 Raphaël returned to Rome, where she worked for a year in the studio of sculptor Ettore Colla and created her best-known sculpture, Fuga da Sodoma (Escape from Sodom), also exhibiting from 1936–38 at the Sindacali. Following the introduction of anti-Semitic Fascist legislation in 1938, she and her daughters took refuge in Genoa at the home of the Jewish art collector, Emilio Jesi and engineer and collector Alberto Della Ragione, where they remained until the end of the war. Afterwards, she participated in important exhibitions, such as the 1948 National Survey of Figurative Arts at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, where, adding her father’s given name to her own, she exhibited as ‘De Simon Raphaël’. In the following years, she participated in the Venice Biennale, the Rome Quadriennale and many other international exhibitions. Ill health gradually brought her sculptural practice to an end, and, following her husband’s death in 1965, she concentrated on painting. Annetta Raphaël died in Rome, Italy in 1975. Her work is not represented in UK public collections but is held in many collections in Italy.
Posthumously, her work has featured in A New Figurative Art 1920–1945: Works from the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection, shown at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London in 2018. In 2024 RIchard Saltoun highlighted Raphaël's later work, with its vibrant palette and dynamic narratives, at its inaugural stand at the 33rd Biennale Internazionale dell'Antiquariato di Firenze (BIAF). The display included a major painting, Er and Tamar (1967), inspired by an Old Testament subject, which Raphaël had characteristically reinterpreted.
Related books
- Giuseppe Appella, Antonietta Raphaël: Catalogo Generale della Scultura (Torino: Umberto Allemandi, 2016)
- Marzio Pinottini and Luca Bochicchio (eds.), Antonietta Raphaël: Continuità del Mito (Albissola Marina: Vanillaedizioni, 2015)
- Serena De Dominicis, 'Antonietta Raphaël: l’Identità, il Femminile, la Maternità', in Marina Bakos and Virginia Baradel (eds.), Ebraicità al Femminile (Padova: Edizioni Trart, 2013)
- Giulia Mafai, La Ragazza Con il Violino (Milano: Skira, 2012)
- Netta Vespignani, Antonietta Raphaël. Sculture in Villa (Roma: Palombi, 2007)
- Serena De Dominicis, Antonietta Raphaël Mafai, un'Artista non Conforme (Milano: Selene, 2006)
- Antonietta Raphaël: Opere dal 1933 al 1974 (Roma: Edizioni della Cometa, 2003)
- Franco Marcoaldi, Antonietta Raphaël: Sculture, Dipinti, Disegni (Bergamo: Lubrina, 2003)
- Achille Bonito Oliva, Antonietta Raphaël: Materia e Colore del Sogno (Roma: Archivio della Scuola Romana, 2000)
- Antonietta Raphael, Sculpture and Painting, 1933–1968 (New York: Paolo Baldacci Gallery, 1995)
- Emily Braun, 'Antonietta Raphaël: Artist, Woman, Anti-Fascist', in Robin Pickering-Iazzi (ed.), Mothers of Invention. Women, Italian Fascism and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995)
- Franco D'Amico (ed.), Antonietta Raphaël (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Ed., 1991)
- Antonietta Raphaël (1895–1975). Sculture e Disegni (Roma: Galleria Carlo Virgilio, 1989)
- Antonietta Raphaël: Sculture (Milano: Mondadori, 1985)
- Maurizio Fagiolo dell`Arco, Raphaël: Scultura Lingua Viva (Roma: Bulzoni, 1978)
- Giuseppe Appella, Raphaël: Disegni 1928–1974. Catalogo Completo dell'Opera Grafica 1956–1974 (Milano: All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, 1976)
- Marzio Pinottini, 'Antonietta Raphael Mafai, Mario Mafai', Arte Illustrata, No. 5, 1972, pp. 83-84
- Scultura di Raphaël (Milano: All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro, 1971)
- Virgilio Guzzi, Raphael Mafai (Roma: Istituto Grafico Tiberino, 1952)
- Valentino Martinelli, 'Raphaël Mafai', Commentari, No. 3, 1952, pp. 293-300
- Giuseppe Bottai, 'Su Alcuni Giovani: Afro, Mafai, Manzù, Mirco, Fontana', Le Arti, No. 3, February-March 1939, pp. 287-295
Public collections
- Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Torino
- Museo del Novecento, Milan
- Museo della Scultura Contemporanea, Matera
- Museo della Scuola Romana, Rome
- National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome
Related organisations
- Academy of Fine Arts, Rome (student)
- Redfern Gallery (exhibitor)
- Royal Academy of Music (student)
- School of Rome (co-founder)
- School of Via Cavour (member)
Related web links
- Antonietta Raphael website
- Antonietta Raphael's biography on Aware Women Artists
- Antonietta Raphael's biography on the Jewish Women Archive
- Presentation of the catalogue on Antonietta Raphael's sculpture by Giuseppe Appella
- Richard Saltoun exhibiting Antoinetta Raphael at BIAF
Selected exhibitions
- Richard Saltoun at the 33rd BIAF, Florence, Italy (2024)
- Antonietta Raphaël, Galleria Simone Aleandri Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy (2019)
- A New Figurative Art 1920–1945: Works from the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London (2018)
- Ebraicità al Femminile. Otto Artiste del Novecento, Centro Culturale Altinate San Gaetano, Padua, Italy (2013)
- Antonietta Raphaël. Sculture in Villa. Musei di Villa Torlonia, Rome, Italy (2007)
- Antonietta Raphael: Opere dal 1933 al 1974, Galleria Ceribelli, Bergamo, Italy (2003)
- Antonietta Raphael, Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy (1991)
- Antonietta Raphaël. Sculture e Disegni (1895–1975), Galleria Carlo Virgilio, Rome, Italy (1989)
- Antonietta Raphaël. Sculture, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (1985)
- Antonietta Raphael Mafai, Mario Mafai, Galleria Menghelli, Florence, Italy (1971)
- Raphael, Centro Culturale Olivetti, Ivrea, Italy (1960)
- XXVII Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (1954)
- Exposition des Laureats de la VI Quadriennale, Galerie des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux, France (1953)
- VI Quadriennale Nazionale d'Arte di Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy (1951)
- XXV Biennle di Venezia, Venice, Italy (1950)
- Mario Mafai, Antonietta Raphael, Galleria Barbaroux, Milan, Italy (1947)
- VI Mostra del Sindacato Fascista Belle Arti del Lazio, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy (1936)
- Prima mostra del Sindacato Laziale Fascista degli Artisti, Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy (1929)
