Anita Brenner
| Anita Brenner | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Hanna Brenner 13 August 1905 Aguascalientes, Mexico |
| Died | 1 December 1974 (aged 69) Aguascalientes, Mexico |
| Nationality | Mexico United States |
| Occupation | Writer, anthropologist |
| Spouse(s) | David Glusker (1930-1961; his death); 2 children |
Anita Brenner (born Hanna Brenner; 13 August 1905 – 1 December 1974) was a 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.
Anita Brenner was born 13 August 1905 in Aguascalientes, Mexico to Isador and Paula Brenner. Her birth name was registered as Hanna. Her father, a Jewish emigrant to Mexico from Latvia, moved his family back and forth from Mexico to Texas during the Mexican Revolution.
In 1916 when Brenner was 11, the family settled in San Antonio, Texas, but Brenner's nanny influenced her enduring passion for Mexico. She 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. After two semesters she was able to persuade her father to let her return to Mexico, since she felt excluded by her university peers because of their antisemitism. After her father had secured promises from Joseph Weinberger, of B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization, and his wife Frances Toor that they would look after her, Isador agreed to let Anita go.
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