Raphael Soyer


Cafe Scene, 1940
"New York artist Raphael Soyer’s style of painting was seriously out of fashion during his lifetime. Born in Russia in 1899, his family arrived in the Bronx in 1912. Soyer soon went to work, holding menial jobs. But throughout the teens, he also studied art, taking free classes at Cooper Union and the Art Students League. Rather than the abstract style that was popular in the 1930s and beyond, his work was realistic—he cast his eye on the lonely and downtrodden working-class New Yorkers he saw in bars, employment agencies, and on city streets. ... Soyer sketched and painted compassionate images of lonely and dispossessed Bowery bums, shopgirls, and secretaries going about their lives and appearing ordinary, unheroic, yet deeply human. ..."
Ephemeral New York
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NY Times: Raphael Soyer, Social Realist Artist, is Dead at 87
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