In memory of Raquel Rabinovich (1929-2025)

January 13, 2025

“We proudly believed in our fictitious solitude of gods or blooming. Islands, unique in the sterile sea, and we felt rising to the beaches of our hearts the urgent beauty of the world…” —After Images, Jorge Luis Borges

Many years ago, when I first met the artist Raquel Rabinovich, born in Argentina, I told her of my amazing experience hearing Borges read his poems from memory at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. She then told one story of her sitting on a Buenos Aires park bench with Borges, telling her stories.

Since 1990, Raquel lived in Rhinebeck, New York working on her Zen-inspired art continuously until 2024. Her positive Buddhist practices and principles propelled her mesmerizingly simple creations. One afternoon, we spent hours in her studio looking at her series of monochrome riverbed mud paintings marking visits to rivers around the world. She was a real metropolitan spirit living in Paris, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, and New York City, among other places.

Since the first opening at our ‘T’ Space Gallery in Rhinebeck, Raquel attended most every opening in our fourteen-season series; she always exuded positive energy and a deep philosophical perspective. She radiated and embodied the profound confidence of an artist who trusted in the lasting impact of her work. I attended the opening of her last exhibition in New York at the Hutchinson Modern and Contemporary Gallery at 47 E 64th Street in 2024. Even in a walker, Raquel was an amazing figure of the positive transformative phenomena of the art of our time.

—Steven Holl, Rhinebeck, 01/13/25