Raphael Montañez Ortíz

Born in Brooklyn on January 30, 1934, to Puerto Rican parents, he became a founding figure of the Destructivist movement through a series of piano destruction concerts in which axes, ritual salt circles, and sustained cathartic force were brought to grand pianos in museums and galleries worldwide — over eighty such performances in total. In 1966 he participated in the first Destruction in Art Symposium in London, and the following year performed Piano Destruction Concert at the Whitney Museum. He also founded El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem in 1969, one of the foremost Latin American cultural institutions in the United States.