Rachel Rosenthal (November 9, 1926 – May 10, 2015) was a French-born interdisciplinary and performance artist, teacher, actress, and animal rights activist based in Los Angeles.
She was best known for her full-length performance art pieces which offered unique combinations of theatre, dance, creative slides and live music.
[5] During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, via a short stay in Portugal.
[2] In April 1941, her family left Brazil to settle in New York, where Rosenthal would later graduate from the High School of Music and Art.
Additionally, she was an assistant designer to Heinz Condella at the New York City Opera and danced in Merce Cunningham's company.
[9] She is considered one of the "first-generation feminist artists," a group that also includes Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, and Judy Chicago.
In 1987, she was invited to design a piece specifically for the international art fair, Documenta 8, occurring in Kassel, West Germany.
[6] Alan M. Kriegsman, a writer for the Washington Post, describes her performance as notably magnetic, skillful and sufficient to keep you raptured.
The company's repertoire deals with themes such as environmental destruction, social justice issues, animal rights, earth-based spirituality, in a hybrid form that combines voice, text, movement, music, video projection, and elaborate theatrical costuming, set design, and dramatic lighting, ultimately challenging the rigid boundaries that have traditionally separated performance art from theater.
This work showed the audience a world of rationed food, government hydro-farms with the purpose of raising climate change dialogue and the possibility of human extinction.
[1] In 1994, she was an honoree of the Women's Caucus for Art honor awards selection committee at the annual WCA conference held in New York City.
[13] In 2000, aged 73, Rosenthal announced that she was retiring from performance to dedicate herself to her animal rights activism and pursue a career as a painter.