Raphael Soyer
American Painter 1899-1987
Embedded Files
Couple Embracing
Couple Embracing
1980
Monotype
Signed by artist
9.5"x 18"
Framed: 15" x 24"
About the Artist
About the Artist
Raphael Zalman Soyer[1] (December 25, 1899 – November 4, 1987) was a Russian-born American painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Soyer was referred to as an American scene painter. He is identified as a Social Realist because of his interest in men and women viewed in contemporary settings which included the streets, subways, salons and artists' studios of New York City. He also wrote several books on his life and art. 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 brothers Moses Soyer and Isaac Soyer were also painters.[2]
He [Soyer] was an artist of the Great Depression, and during the 1930s, Raphael and his brother Moses engaged in Social Realism, demonstrating empathy with the struggles of the working class.[13] In 1939, the twins worked together with the Works Project Administration, Federal Art Project (WPA-FAP) mural at the Kingsessing Station post office in Philadelphia.[9][14]
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.[15
Among Soyer's portrait subjects were artists and writers who were his friends; these included Allen Ginsberg, Arshile Gorky, Chaim Gross, Gitel Steed, Edward Hopper, Philip Evergood, Alice Neel and Steve Poleskie. In 1967 the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a retrospective of his work.
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.[16]
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