Ep. 18: Final Years
Annette and Stan Smith were married only a few years. In 1967, at the age of sixty, Annette sells her house in Acapulco, rents an apartment in Mexico City as well as one on East 38th Street in New York.
Annette Nancarrow portrait by Pedro Friedeberg.
Although she continues to love Acapulco and to return each season to participate in a group show to benefit a local orphanage and to renew old friendships, Annette’s Acapulco era is essentially over.
As prolific and engaged in life as always, Annette continued to write for numerous publications in both English and Spanish, wrote a script for a documentary for New York City’s WNET titled The Unfinished Revolution in Mexico, painted, and exhibited her jewelry. Many prominent women purchased and wore her designs, including Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, Frida Kahlo, Anaïs Nin, Marion Anderson, Helen O’Gorman, and Peggy Guggenheim. Her jewelry has been featured in museums, galleries, and top women’s magazines in Mexico and the United States. Her paintings have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and the Fine Art museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, retain pieces in their collections.
In 1973 a serious automobile accident impaired her health. Her son Luis commissioned Pedro Friedeberg to paint what would be her last portrait.
Painting in the National Museum of Women in the Arts collection, Washington, DC.
By now she had moved into her new apartment in Mexico City and routinely spent summers and winters there and spring and fall in New York. Wherever Annette is, there is gaiety, talk of art, music, and the world; parties and festivities with friends, children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. Her ability to connect with people, to draw them to her, to encourage and support them never ceases—and even in her later years there is a special man in her life.
By 1975 her heart begins to falter and she eventually has a series of three pacemakers installed. On January 8, 1992, Annette Margolis Nancarrow passes into history having lived an extraordinary life in even more extraordinary times.
More images from my archives . . .
