Moses Soyer (December 25, 1899 – September 3, 1974) was an American
social realist
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...
painter.
Biography
He was born as Moses Schoar and both he and his identical twin brother,
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual a ...
, were born in
Borisoglebsk
Borisoglebsk (russian: Борисогле́бск) is a town in Voronezh Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Vorona River near its confluence with the Khopyor. Population: 65,000 (1969).
History
Borisoglebsk was founded in 16 ...
,
Tambov
Tambov (, ; rus, Тамбов, p=tɐmˈbof) is a city and the administrative center of Tambov Oblast, central Russia, at the confluence of the Tsna and Studenets Rivers, about south-southeast of Moscow. Population: 280,161 ( 2010 Census); 29 ...
, a southern province of Russia on December 25, 1899.
Their father, Abraham Shauer, a
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
scholar, writer and teacher,
raised his six children in an intellectual environment in which much emphasis was placed on academic and artistic pursuits. Their mother, Bella, was an embroiderer. Their cousin was painter and meteorologist Joshua Zalman Holland. Due to the many difficulties for the Jewish population in the late Russian Empire, the Soyer family was forced to emigrate in 1912 to the United States, where they ultimately settled in
the Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
.
The family name changed from Schoar to Soyer during immigration.
Soyer married in 1922 to Ida Chassne, a dancer.
Together they had one son, David Soyer. Dancers were a recurring subject in his paintings.
[''Jewish Renaissance'', October 2009, p. 43.]
Soyer studied art in New York with his twin Raphael, first at
Cooper Union, and continued his studied at
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
.
He diverged from his twin and attended
Educational Alliance
Educational Alliance is a leading social institution that has been serving communities in New York City’s Lower Manhattan since 1889. It provides multi-generational programs and services in education, health and wellness, arts and culture, and c ...
.
And later studying at the
Ferrer Art School, where he studied under the
Ashcan painters
Robert Henri
Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher.
As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...
and
George Bellows.
He had his first solo exhibition in 1926 and began teaching art the following year at the Contemporary Art School and
The New School
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
.
He was an artist of the
Great Depression, and during the 1930s, Moses and his brother Raphael engaged in Social Realism, demonstrating empathy with the struggles of the working class. In 1939, the twins worked together with the
Works Project Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, in ...
,
Federal Art Project
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...
(WPA-FAP) mural at the
Kingsessing
Kingsessing is a neighborhood in the Southwest section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. On the west side of the Schuylkill River, it is next to the neighborhoods of Cedar Park, Southwest Schuylkill, and Mount Moriah, as well as the ...
Station post office in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
.
Soyer wrote a weekly column for a Yiddish newspaper called "In the World of Art".
Death and legacy
He died in the
Chelsea Hotel in New York on September 3, 1974, while painting dancer and choreographer
Phoebe Neville. He was buried in Acacia Cemetery in
Queens County, New York.
The
Brooklyn Museum, the
Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation and expansion project comple ...
, the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...
(Washington, DC), the
Honolulu Museum of Art
The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...
, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
(New York City), the
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
The Phillips Collection
The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips (art collector), Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the ...
(Washington, DC), the
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
(Minneapolis, Minnesota), the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...
(New York City), the
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Amon may refer to:
Mythology
* Amun, an Ancient Egyptian deity, also known as Amon and Amon-Ra
* Aamon, a Goetic demon
People Momonym
* Amon of Judah ( 664– 640 BC), king of Judah
Given name
* Amon G. Carter (1879–1955), American pu ...
(Fort Worth), the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, and
Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...
are among the institutions holding works by Moses Soyer. The untitled painting in the collection of the
Honolulu Museum of Art
The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...
is an example of his intimate and psychologically penetrating portraits of ordinary people, for which he is best known.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Moses Soyer Biography by American Contemporary Art Galleries*
*
Several Soyer exhibition catalogsfrom The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Soyer, Moses
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
Jews from the Russian Empire
Jewish American artists
Jewish painters
Social realist artists
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
1899 births
1974 deaths
Federal Art Project artists
20th-century American painters
American male painters
Cooper Union alumni