Schneebaum, Tobias

Tobias Schneebaum was born in 1922 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He graduated from the City College of New York (1943) and during World War II he served in the Army as a radar mechanic, and after the war he studied art under Tamayo, under whose suggestion he went to Mexico for three and a half years-painting, teaching and developing an increasing interest in archaeology and anthropology.

In 1955 he was granted a Fulbright Fellowship to study painting in Peru, and it was during this time that he encountered for the first time the world of uncivilized tribes that would become his passion. After a year in the Peruvian jungle, Schneebaum returned to civilization with stories that he recounted in his first book Keep the River on Your Right . In 1977 he received a degree in cultural anthropology from Goddard College, Vermont.

During his lifetime he has traveled widely throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, always choosing the back roads, away from civilization. Schneebaum is the author of Keep the River on Your Right (1969), Wild Man (1977) and Where the Spirits Dwell (1988), which together form his autobiographical trilogy. He also wrote Embodied Spirits: Ritual Carvings of the Asmat (1990) and Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea (2000).

From 1973 to 1983 he served as Assistant Curator of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Considered an authority on Asmat culture and art he has lectured widely and curated several exhibitions on Asmat art, including teaching at the New School for Social Research. Keep the River on Your Right was adapted to a major motion picture which was released in 2001. Tobias Schneebaum died on September 20, 2005.