Background
Rafael Soyer was born on December 25, 1899 in Borisoglebsk, Voronezh, Russian Federation. Due to Russian oppression, the Soyer family was forced to emigrate in 1912 to the United States, where they ultimately settled in the Bronx.
Self Portrait by Raphael Soyer.
(In Diary Of An Artist, Soyer eloquently reminisces about ...)
In Diary Of An Artist, Soyer eloquently reminisces about his travels throughout Europe; his impressions of great paintings hung in the museums of Paris, London, Rome, Florence, and the Soviet Union; and his affection for the works of Rembrandt, Degas, Cezanne, Eakins, and other art geniuses. His conversations with his colleagues of twentieth-century art, including Edward Hopper, Jack Levine, Leonard Baskin, and Henry Moore, elicit rarely articulated philosophies behind their work. And in the most autobiographical section, Soyer acknowledges the profound influence his family and friends have had on his work, as he recounts his emigration from Russia and his training and development as an artist.
https://www.amazon.com/Diary-artist-Raphael-Soyer/dp/0915220296/?tag=2022091-20
1977
Rafael Soyer was born on December 25, 1899 in Borisoglebsk, Voronezh, Russian Federation. Due to Russian oppression, the Soyer family was forced to emigrate in 1912 to the United States, where they ultimately settled in the Bronx.
Rafael Soyer pursued his art education at the free schools of the Cooper Union where he met Chaim Gross, who became a lifelong friend from that time. He continued his studies at the National Academy of Design and, subsequently, at the Art Students League of New York. While there, Rafael Soyer studied with Guy Pene du Bois and Boardman Robinson, taking up the gritty urban subjects of the Ashcan school.
After his formal education ended, Rafael Soyer became associated with the Fourteenth Street School of painters that included Reginald Marsh, Isabel Bishop, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Peggy Bacon and, his teacher, Guy Pene du Bois. He persistently investigated a number of themes - female nudes, portraits of friends and family, New York and, especially, its people - in his paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints.
After his time in art school, Rafael Soyer did not immediately begin working as a professional artist, and instead painted during his free time while working other jobs. Soyer's first solo exhibition took place in 1929. Beginning in the early 1930s, he showed regularly in the large annual and biennial American exhibitions of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He had a series of solo exhibitions in New York galleries, and also worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project in the 1930s.
Soyer's teaching career began at the John Reed Club, New York, in 1930 and included stints at the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research and the National Academy. His work is in numerous museums including the Museum of Modern Art; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The New York Public Library, New York; Tel Aviv Museum, Israel; Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy and Los Angeles County Museum, California. Renowned art collector Victor Ganz started collecting art in his teenage years with the purchases of watercolors by Louis Eilshemius and Jules Pascin and an oil painting by Raphael Soyer.
Rafael Soyer deeply admired fellow American artist Thomas Eakins, and produced a group portrait entitled Homage to Thomas Eakins, which was based on Fantin-Latour's Hommage à Delacroix.
Rafael Soyer was hired in 1940, along with eight other prominent American artists, to document dramatic scenes and characters during the production of the film The Long Voyage Home, a cinematic adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's plays. He also illustrated two books for Isaac Bashevis Singer, entitled A Little Boy in Search of God and Love and Exile.
(In Diary Of An Artist, Soyer eloquently reminisces about ...)
1977Rafael Soyer supported left-wing politics.
Rafael Soyer was adamant in his belief in representational art and strongly opposed the dominant force of abstract art during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Defending his position, he stated: "I choose to be a realist and a humanist in art."
On February 8, 1931, Rafael Soyer married Rebecca Letz, who was friends with his sister Fanny.