by Geršonas Taicas

This year marks 125 years since the birth in Lithuania of the famous artist and sculptor Antonietta Raphaël-Mafai. She was born in what is now the Kaunas neighborhood of Viljampolė, aka Slobodka, although the town didn’t extend that far then, to a large family. According to archival information the family had 12 children, although other sources say 14, but Antonietta was the only girl.

Her father Simon Rafael was a melamed, Hebrew for teacher, and he taught Hebrew and Jewish traditions at a heder, or primary school. Her mother Mariam was a seamstress and tailor. Simon died in 1903 and her mother took the remaining children to live in London in 1905.


Mother at the table, Hanukkah. Rafael, 1975.

Some of the sons had learned tailoring and immigrated to Great Britain at the end of the 19th century. A British archive shows there were five tailors with the surname Rafael in Leeds: Solomon, David, Meer, Samuel and Godfrey. They had all come from the Russian Empire and were related, and their children were also tailors.

Antonietta earned in a degree in playing piano, taught music and liked to visit the British Museum, where she was especially impressed by Egyptian statuary.

Self-portrait with violin.

In London she soon met sculptor Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) and she began drawing in 1918. She was more devoted to music and had a good singing voice. After completing piano class at the Royal Academy of Music and following her mother’s death she moved to Paris in 1919, and then to Rome in 1924.

Antonietta began attending a Rome art school in 1925 where she met her future husband Mario Mafai and held her first exhibition of works. She and her husband went to Paris in 1930 and she began to sculpt there. Initially they were vague forms, uncharacteristic of Italian sculpture.

Yom Kippur at Synagogue.

During WWII the family hid with artist friends in Genoa. She first participated at the Venice Biennale in 1948. She showed her work at the Zodiac Gallery in Rome in 1952. She and her husband Mario established the Scuola Romana movement. She began touring the world in 1956 exhibiting her work. She also participated in a documentary film about her husband called “Io non sono un altro – l’arte di Mario Mafai.”

Antonietta and Mario had three daughters, Miriam, Simona and Giulia.

Miriam was born in 1926, died in 2012 and was a journalist and political activist. Simona (1928-2019) was a writer and a member of the Italian Senate. Giulia was born in 1930 and is a scenographer and costume designer.

Mario Mafai died in 1965. Antonietta died in Rome in September, 1975.