Mariette Lydis

de Claudio Iglesias, Santiago Villanueva

Mariette Lydis was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1887. She was a self-taught artist dedicated to painting, drawing and engraving. She spent her youth in Paris, from 1924 to 1939. She was well-known in Parisian galleries for her works on prostitutes, lesbians and girls. At the beginning of World War II, she separated from her husband who was to return to Italy and moved to Winchcombe, England, where she spent a year. In 1940 she arrived in Buenos Aires, invited by the marchand Müller. She lived in an apartment on Calle Cerrito, in the neighborhood of Recoleta, which in turn operated as a workshop and where she taught drawing classes. She made many exhibitions and illustrations for books. The Sívori Museum has in its heritage seventy works of her authorship. She died in Buenos Aires on April 26, 1970.