Tobias Schneebaum’s Followers (14)

Tobias Schneebaum

Born

in New York, The United States

March 25, 1922

Died

September 20, 2005

Genre

Biographies & Memoirs

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Tobias Schneebaum was an American artist, anthropologist, and AIDS activist. He is best known for his experiences living, and traveling among the Harakmbut people of Peru, and the Asmat people of Papua, Western New Guinea, Indonesia then known as Irian Jaya.He was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side and grew up in Brooklyn. In 1939 he graduated from the Stuyvesant High School, moving on to the City College of New York, graduating in 1943 after having majored in mathematics and art. During World War II he served as a radar repairman in the U.S. Army.
Travels

In 1947, after briefly studying painting with Rufino Tamayo at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Schneebaum went to live and paint in Mexico for three years, living among the Lakadone tribe. In Tobias Schneebaum was an American artist, anthropologist, and AIDS activist. He is best known for his experiences living, and traveling among the Harakmbut people of Peru, and the Asmat people of Papua, Western New Guinea, Indonesia then known as Irian Jaya.He was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side and grew up in Brooklyn. In 1939 he graduated from the Stuyvesant High School, moving on to the City College of New York, graduating in 1943 after having majored in mathematics and art. During World War II he served as a radar repairman in the U.S. Army.
Travels

In 1947, after briefly studying painting with Rufino Tamayo at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Schneebaum went to live and paint in Mexico for three years, living among the Lakadone tribe. In 1955 he won a Fulbright fellowship to travel and paint in Peru. After hitch-hiking from New York to Peru, he lived with the Harakmbut people for seven months, where he slept with his male subjects and claimed to have joined the tribe in cannibalism on one occasion.

Until 1970 he was the designer at Tiber Press, then in 1973 he embarked on his third overseas trip, to Irian Jaya in South East Asia, living with the Asmat people on the south-western coast. He helped establish the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress. Schneebaum would return there in 1995 to revisit a former lover, named Aipit. He recounted his journey into the jungles of Peru in the 1961 memoir Keep the River on Your Right. In 1999, he revisited both Irian Jaya and Peru for a documentary film, also titled Keep the River on Your Right.

Schneebaum spent the final years of his life in Westbeth Artists Community, an artists' commune in Greenwich Village, New York City, also home to Merce Cunningham and Diane Arbus, and died in 2005 in Great Neck, New York. He bequeathed his renowned Asmat shield collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and his personal papers are preserved within the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies ...more

Combine Editions
Tobias Schneebaum’s books

Average rating: 3.87 · 550 ratings · 60 reviews · 18 distinct works • Similar authors

	Keep the River on Your Right 3.89 avg rating — 440 ratings — published 1969 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Where the Spirits Dwell: An Odyssey in the Jungle of New Guinea 3.74 avg rating — 62 ratings — published 1988 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wild Man 3.80 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 2000 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lá onde o rio te leva 3.75 avg rating — 12 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea by Tobias Schneebaum, David Bergman (Contributor) 4.11 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 2000	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Asmat Images from the Collection of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress: Text, Photographs and Drawings 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1985 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sono stato un cannibale 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1974	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Embodied Spirits: Ritual Carvings of the Asmat. A Traveling Exhibition from the Gajdusek Collection of the Peabody Museum of Salem and the Crosier Asmat Museum Collection of Hastings, Nebraska really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1990 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Onde os Espíritos Vivem liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1991	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Au pays des hommes nus 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1993 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars