Rudolf Ray

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Rudolf Ray (born as Rudolf Rapaport ; April 13, 1891 in Dünaburg , then Russia, today Daugavpils in Latvia - May 1984 in London ) was an originally expressionist , later abstract painter who lived and worked mainly in Europe and North America.

life and work

Rudolf Rays parents were Isak Rapaport (died 1938) and Sofie, née Lurie, (1866-1941), he had a sister, Eugenie (1895-1981). Rudolf Ray studied and worked in Vienna in the 1920s. He studied law and was entered in the address book at least in the 1930s as a lawyer, but also as a painter. From 1934 onwards, Rudolf Rapaport called himself Rudolf Ray . He made a name for himself as a portrait painter ; after studying the teachings of Sigmund Freud , he tried to represent the unconscious. His work was largely marginalized and ignored, but was greatly appreciated by some colleagues and critics - including Oskar Kokoschka and Stefan Pollatschek .

In 1927 he married the painter Katharina Zirner , who gave birth to their son Martin on their honeymoon in Kathmandu and died as a result of childbirth. Martin Rapaport was also called Martin Ray from 1934 at the latest. After the annexation of Austria , Rudolf Ray had to leave the country. He came to New York via France in 1942. With him came his mother, who had also previously lived in Vienna with him and his sister, married Andermann. The family lived together again in New York. In the 1950s he lived in Almora in India, from 1960 to 1974 mostly in Tepoztlán in Mexico.

In New York he had turned from “psychological painting” to abstract art . In New York there was at least one exhibition of his works in 1952, in 1955 Time Magazine discussed his works, and there was another exhibition in Vienna in 1970. In 2019 a retrospective of his work was shown at Suppan Fine Arts in Vienna.

He was married a second time, and in 1987 Joyce Roland Ray donated a work by her husband to the Metropolitan Museum of Art .

His son Martin Ray stayed in Austria in 1938. Probably because of a disability or chronic illness he was unable to escape with them. He is said to have been stung by an insect after his birth in India, which is said to have led to an intellectual disability. Most recently he was in a collection camp for sick Jews in Malzgasse in Vienna's 7th district, where he lost his life on October 28, 1944.

Quote

“The painter Rapaport is laughed at by the majority of contemporaries who know his pictures; Colleagues refuse to recognize him, block the exhibition of his pictures, look at him arrogantly over the shoulder, make him contemptuous. "

- Stefan Pollatschek : The painter Rudolf Rapaport. The superreal in a portrait. Vienna 1933, p. 11

Works in museums

literature

  • Stefan Pollatschek : The painter Rudolf Rapaport. The superreal in a portrait. A study. Wiener Buch- und Kunstverlag, Vienna 1933.
  • Martin Suppan : Rudolf Ray (1891–1984) - painter between worlds. Monograph. Galerie & Edition Suppan Fine Arts, Vienna 2019, ISBN 3-901255-43-5 .
  • Sonja Niederacher: Dossier on Oskar Kokoschka “Nude boy lying on his back with knees drawn up. Savoyard Boy ”, 1912. Leopold Museum, 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tiziano Terzani : Another round on the carousel: About life and death. Droemer, 2014, ISBN 978-3-42630057-2 .
  2. ↑ Michael Huber: Rudolf Ray: A modern innovator in the vortex of the 20th century. In: Kurier , December 27, 2019, accessed July 1, 2020
  3. ^ The Andermann couple owned a house in Vienna- Döbling . This was withdrawn in 1944 in favor of the German Reich and put back in 1949.
  4. ^ Gerda Hoffer and Stefan Pollatschek - estate. Website of the Theodor Kramer Society, accessed on July 1, 2020.
  5. ↑ Ilse Krorotin: biografiA: Lexicon of Austrian women. Volume 1. Böhlau Verlag 2015, ISBN 978-3-20579590-2 , p. 104.
  6. ^ Soups Fine Arts: Rudolf Ray. Retrieved December 28, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Ray, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rapaport, Rudolf (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION expressionist and abstract painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Daugavpils
DATE OF DEATH May 1984
Place of death London