Isaac Soyer

Isaac Soyer (April 26, 1902 – July 8, 1981) was a Russian-born American social realist painter and educator. His art work often portrayed working-class people of New York City in his paintings.[3]

Isaac Soyer
Born
Isaac Schoar

April 26, 1902
Borisoglebsk[1] or Tambov [2] (disputed), Russia
DiedJuly 8, 1981
Manhattan, New York, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationNational Academy of Design, Cooper Union, Educational Alliance
Known forPainter
Works
Employment Agency (1937)
MovementSocial realist
Family

Biography

He was born as Isaac Schoar on April 26, 1902 in Russia. He was the fourth of six children; his older twin brothers Moses Soyer and Raphael Soyer were also painters.[4] Their father, Abraham Shauer, a Hebrew scholar, writer and teacher,[5] 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.[6] Their cousin was painter and meteorologist Joshua Zalman Holland.[7] 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.[2][8][9] The family name changed from Schoar to Soyer during immigration.[10]

Isaac Soyer studied at the National Academy of Design, Cooper Union, Educational Alliance and studied in Paris and Madrid.[11][4][12]

Soyer painted portraits of friends and relatives and vignettes of working-class life. He taught classes at the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project.[13]

Soyer's work, Employment Agency (1937) reveals the social realities of the years of the Great Depression, it features the image of a Black woman and three white men waiting for a job interview response.[14][15]

During World War II, Soyer worked at Bell Aircraft Corporation in Buffalo, New York.[16][12]

Soyer was an art educator at a number of institutions including, from 1941 until 1947 he taught at Albright Art School at the University of Buffalo; and from 1947 until 1971 at Brooklyn Museum Art School.[17] He additionally taught at Art Institute of Buffalo, Niagara Falls Art School, Educational Alliance, New School for Social Research (1968), Art Students League of New York (1969).[18][19]

Death and legacy

Soyer died of a heart attack at Lenox Hill Hospital on July 8, 1981 at age 79, he was residing in Manhattan at the time.[20]

Several of his works are in the collections of public museums, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, and the Dallas Museum of Art.[20]

References
  1. "Soyer". The Columbia Encyclopedia. 2001. Archived from the original on 2007-02-03. Retrieved 2007-04-26.
  2. "Isaac Soyer". Crystal Reference Encyclopedia. 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-05-22. Retrieved 2007-04-26.
  3. "Collections, Isaac Soyer". Smithsonian American Art Museum. 2007. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2007-04-26.
  4. "Isaac Soyer". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2020-11-10. Painter, trained at Cooper Union.
  5. Harshav, Benjamin (2007). The Polyphony of Jewish Culture. Stanford University Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-8047-5512-2.
  6. Berman, Avis (December 1979). "Raphael Soyer at 80: 'Not painting would be like not breathing': Smithsonian American Art/Portrait Gallery Library". ARTnews.
  7. Schudel, Matt (2011-05-28). "A Local Life: Joshua Z. Holland, 89, a man of science with an artist's soul". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  8. "A Finding Aid to the Raphael Soyer papers, 1933-1989 | Digitized Collection". Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  9. Richard, Paul (1982-08-05). "The Souls of Raphael Soyer". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  10. "Raphael Soyer, American, born Russia, 1899 - 1987, Schoar, Raphael". The National Gallery of Art (NGA). Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  11. The Art Students League. Art Students League of New York. 1978. p. 70.
  12. Krane, Susan (1987). The Wayward Muse: A Historical Survey of Painting in Buffalo. Albright-Knox Art Gallery. p. 196. ISBN 978-0-914782-63-6.
  13. "Ex-Prof of Anatomy Retires To Life of Sculpting, Painting". Newspapers.com. Courier-Post. 3 September 1998. p. 62. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  14. Baldwin, Nick (4 October 1981). "Thirties-art Survey at Cedar-Rapids". Newspapers.com. The Des Moines Register. p. 22. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  15. Hills, Patricia; Tarbell, Roberta K.; Art, Whitney Museum of American (1980). The Figurative Tradition and the Whitney Museum of American Art: Paintings and Sculpture from the Permanent Collection. University of Delaware Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-87413-184-0.
  16. "Painters in War Plants". Magazine of Art. American Federation of Arts. 1944. p. 74.
  17. Kleeblatt, Norman L.; Chevlowe, Susan (1991). Painting a Place in America: Jewish Artists in New York, 1900-1945 : a Tribute to the Educational Alliance Art School. Jewish Museum. ISBN 978-0-253-28536-2. From 1941 to 1947, Soyer taught at the Albright Art School at the University of Buffalo
  18. Eisenstadt, Peter (2005-05-19). The Encyclopedia of New York State. Syracuse University Press. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-8156-0808-0.
  19. "Isaac Soyer". The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001. Archived from the original on 2011-06-22. Retrieved 2007-04-28.
  20. "Isaac Soyer, a Painter Of the American Scene". The New York Times. 1981-07-16. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-11-11.


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