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Raphael Soyer (1899-1987)
Raphael Soyer and his twin brother Moses Soyer were born in Borisglebsk, South Russia, and settled in the Bronx in 1912. He pursued his art education at Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and at the Art Students League. Associated with the Fourteenth Street School of painters, he was adamant about his belief in representational art and strongly opposed the dominant force of abstract art, saying “I choose to be a realist and a humanist in art”. He participated in the WPA Federal Arts Program in the 1930s, and was a painter, draftsman, printmaker, and author of several books on his own life and art. A close friend of Singer’s, he richly visualized the personae of Singer’s characters with his illustrations, at Singer’s request, for A Young Man in Search of Love (Doubleday & Company, 1978), Lost in America (Doubleday & Company, 1981), Love and Exile (Doubleday & Company, 1984), and The Gentleman from Cracow (Touchstone Publishers, 1970).
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