Abel Posse
The novelist's father, Ernesto Parentini, a porteño of Italian parents, was one of the founders of Artistas Argentinos Asociados and was the producer of the legendary feature film La guerra gaucha (1942), based on the text by the poet Leopoldo Lugones. The young Abel Posse grew up in the Argentine capital near Rivadavia street, and given his father's profession was exposed to the artistic and cultural milieu this most sophisticated of the South American capitals had to offer. The “Queen of the River Plate”, as Buenos Aires came to be known, fascinated the young man, (4) and his memories are evoked in his novel Los demonios ocultos (1987).
He was able to mingle with the glamorous stars of Argentine show business, like Chas de Cruz, Pierina Dealessi, Ulises Petit de Murat, Muñoz Azpiri, the writer of radioplays which were performed by Eva Duarte (de Perón), as well as the tango composers Aníbal Troilo and Homero Manzi. Such were the family connections to show business that one of his aunts, Esmeralda Leiva de Heredia, better known as “La Jardín”, was an actress friend of Eva Duarte. (5) Growing up in this environment enabled him to obtain an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the tango repertoire and its culture, (6) which imbues his novel La reina del Plata (1988).
Sigmund Abeles
Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Abeles grew up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The only child of Samuel and Henrietta Abeles, he was named after his grandfather, a renowned Orthodox rabbi who immigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1901. His father, a Hungarian Jew, was a decorated World War I veteran who used his pension to open up a retail business in Sheeps Head Bay. His mother was of Polish-Jewish descent and worked as a librarian before her marriage. After his parents divorced early on in his life, he moved to Myrtle Beach with his mother where she started a new life by opening up a rooming house called Paul's Guest House on US Highway 17. Spending a great deal of time alone in the rooming house, Sigmund grew a fascination for how many types of people occupy the same domain which had a huge impact and direction on his artwork took. Sigmund Abeles received no formal art training in the public schools at Myrtle Beach. Searching for inspiration, Abeles found Brookgreen Gardens, an outdoor sculpture park, which provided him with a multitude of beautiful bronze and marble figures to sketch; years later, as an established artist, he had his life-sized bronze sculpture, “ Kaethe, age 9” (modeled in 1968 and later cast in Bronze in 2006), placed in Brookgreen’s permanent collection. Abeles was invited later to hold a major solo exhibition there in 2015 called "Carolina Roots". During his high school years, Sigmund was mentored by Truman Moore Sr., a wood sculptor, who pointed him towards the Boston artist Gerard Francis Tempest whom he later apprenticed with.Abeles attended the University of South Carolina, initially for pre-medical studies to appease his mother but he later switched to art studies. There he met Jasper Johns, an upper classman and became long term acquaintances. They shared the same art professors, Edmund Yaghijian and Catharine Rembert. In 1952, Abeles attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for only one semester because his mother would only allow him to study commercial art. In the summer of 1954, determined to pursue his love for fine arts and figurative study, he attended the Art Students League of New York where he was taught by Reginald Marsh, Morris Kantor and Harry Sternberg. In 1955, he received a scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He worked under Edwin Dickinson and Isabel Bishop. There he also made lifelong friendships with fellow students Sidney Hurwitz, Philip Grausman, Jerome Witkin and Ashley Bryan. In 1957, he received another scholarship to study at Columbia University where he received his MFA in Painting in just one year.