The Argentine editor, writer and photographer based in Spain Mario Muchnik has died today at the age of 91as announced by Casa de América on social networks.
“Goodbye, Mario Muchnik. We regret the loss of the Argentine publisher. Muchnik was based in Spain and we were lucky that he shared his editorial and photographic work at Casa de América. May the earth be light to you”, Casa de América published in Twitter.
Goodbye Mario Muchnik ?
We regret the loss of the Argentine publisher. Muchnik was based in Spain and we were lucky that he shared his editorial and photographic work at Casa de América. Let the earth be mild. pic.twitter.com/ZY6iQiwVBA
— House of America (@casamerica) March 27, 2022
Muchnik, of Russian descent, was born on June 21, 1931 in Buenos Aires.
His father, Jacobo (1907-1995) was an important publicist and publisher (co-founder with Víctor Seix of Difusora Internacional) who organized meetings with artists and writers at home, including the writers Borges and Sabatowhich awakened in Mario the love for literature.
With the arrival of the first Peronist government (1946-1952) in Argentina, the Muchnik family emigrated to New York, where Mario graduated in Physics from Columbia University in 1953 and in 1957 he received his doctorate in Rome.
Between 1963 and 1966 he was a professor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Rome and, in 1967, editor-in-chief in London of an audiovisual company.
Later he experienced the ‘French May’ first-hand as a photographer and combined his work as an independent professional – he created Muchnik Editores (1973-1987) – with the direction of literary collections for the publisher Robert Laffont until 1978.
that last year settled in Barcelona.
In 1980 the award of the Nobel to Elías Canettia Bulgarian of Sephardic origin who wrote in German and for whom Mario was editor in Spain, broadened Muchnik’s editorial horizon: literary director of Ariel-Seix Barral (1982-1983), head of his father’s publisher Difusora Internacional (1985-2012) , which absorbed Mario’s publishing label and was bought by the Swiss L’Age d’Homme in 1991, the year in which the Anaya-Mario Muchnik publishing house became a reality, which he left in 1997.
And in 1998 he launched the publishing house Taller de Mario Muchnik.
As an author he has published the books “Michelangelo” (1975) (“Miguel Angel up close”), “Jewish World. Personal Chronicle” (1983), “Jewish World” (1985), “A Barbarian in Paris” (1986), “Albert Einstein” (1989) and “For my bookstore friends” (1993).
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He declared himself a non-believing Jew, a transgressor and never within Judaism traditions. In addition, he was considered one of the few Jews who has publicly defended the Palestinian cause.
He was remarried to Nicole Thibon and had three children.