(Russian, 1899 - 1987)
"My art is representational by choice. In my opinion, if the art of painting is to survive, it must describe and express people, their lives and times. It must communicate."
--Raphael Soyer, Self-Revealment, A Memoir, Maecenas Press, Random House, N.Y.1969
Raphael Soyer was born on December 25, 1899 in Tombov Russia. His father - a professor of Hebrew literature and history in southern Russia made his house an active centre for artists and intellectuals. Because the Soyers were Jewish, the family was deported in 1912. In search of religious and intellectual freedom, the Soyer family settled in the Lower East side of New York city where Raphael and his twin brother Moses, depicted the life they saw around them.
From 1914 to 1917, Raphael studied drawing and painting at Cooper Union, at the National Academy of Design from 1918 to 1922. He was later a student of Guy Pène du Bois at the Art Students League. Surpassing anything he learned, he especially acknowledged the influence of Courbet, Corot, Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, and, most of all, Degas.
Raphael Soyer is labelled a social realist due to a predilection to the poor of
Raphael Soyer
Woman Washing Her Face
Oil on Canvas
21 x 15
During the depression years, Soyer depicted working people, Bowery bums as well as unemployed people, but these works were not overtly political compared to some of his contemporaries. And, Soyer said, "In front of paintings by George Grosz, I became so dissatisfied with the mildness, the 'sympathy,' the unexaggerated ness of my art." Painting from nature not from imagination, Soyer’s work reflects his own temperament.
In the 1930’s, Soyer's work was nationally recognized. These poignant portrayals of New York City's workers and unemployed secured his reputation as a major Social Realist. Commissioned by the WPA – FAP, he painted a mural with his twin brother Moses for the Kingsessing Station, Philadelphia Post Office.
By 1940, he concentrated on studies of woman at work or posing in a studio. Woman Washing Her Face is representative of Soyer's long-term interest in the female figure. “Degas’s influence and Bonnard’s domestic scenes genre are recognizable into this interior view. But the solidly modelled form of the body and the intimacy of the moment belongs to Soyers’ style. Up close, the brush work is evident (a modernist trait, surely), but from a few steps away it disappears into the skillfully captured patterns of light and shadow, line and texture.” [2] This intimate study of solitary woman “à la toilette” depicts a young lady with generous body shapes drying her face with a white towel. Her rounded nape and her eyes’ contraction introduce a quiet movement inside this room devoid of any decoration. The viewer’s eyes cannot be distracted by any background details or open perspective. The white bed dress picks up a warm light coming from the right creating a luminous field into this dark and grey room. Also considerate as an intimist, his isolated and introspective portraits are universally admired.
Although his work has been submerged by interest in other art movements, he has always enjoyed a small but loyal group of collectors.
He had his first one-man exhibition in 1929, and in succeeding years won an impressive array of awards. Subsequent shows were held at the Valentine Gallery, Associated American Artist, Babcock, Rehn and the Forum Gallery.
His works have been collected by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Albright-KnoxMuseum,
[1] Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art
[2] Gail Stavisky, http://www.butlerart.com/pc_book/pages/raphael_soyer_1899.htm