Following the overwhelming response to our presentation at Independent 20th Century at The Breuer, Forum Gallery presents an exceptional selection of important paintings by American social realist painter Raphael Soyer (1899-1987) in our new location on the 7th Floor of the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street at Madison Avenue, New York.
Forum Gallery has represented the Artist and his estate since its founding in 1961, and proudly facilitated a major retrospective honoring Raphael Soyer, organized and first presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art at The Breuer Building in 1967. The exhibition traveled to six museums across the country. Important one-person solo exhibitions for Raphael Soyer were later presented in Washington, D.C. by The National Collection of Fine Arts in 1977, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1982.
Raphael Soyer immigrated to the United States in 1912 at the age of 12. His family settled on New York’s Lower East Side, and Raphael Soyer went on to become a central figure of the Fourteenth Street School and a beloved American artist whose contribution is a vital and irreplaceable component of American figurative art in the 20th Century.
Lloyd Goodrich, the Whitney Museum’s Director, wrote the catalogue for the 1967 Raphael Soyer retrospective and included this quote from Soyer, noting, “This philosophy has guided Soyer’s art for over forty years.” In fact, Soyer remained committed to this philosophy for the rest of his life. The catalogue was expanded and published in 1972 by Harry N. Abrams as a monograph.
Humanity was Raphael Soyer’s subject, and the language by which he chose to express it was his own unique, painterly realism. From within the epicenter of the heated debates about what art is and is not, and how art should and should not look that took place in New York throughout the 20th Century, Raphael Soyer became famous for his unwavering commitment to humanist representation, leading him to be dubbed the “Dean of Realists” by John Canaday writing for The New York Times in 1972.
Soyer’s dedication to the simple and direct depiction of a person placed the emphasis on character, humanity, and individuality. The results are paintings that probe and explore the depths, feelings and complexities of each subject, each genuine person. Perhaps Soyer’s greatest gift was the ability to capture the emotion and personality of normal people, and this he did. Along the way, Raphael Soyer captured the spirit of a century of challenge and change through the image of its living inhabitants.