Raphael Soyer

American, 1899-1987

Raphael Soyer was a Russian-born American painter, draftsman, and printmaker best known for his sensitive depictions of everyday urban life. A central figure in American realism during the 20th century, his work offered a humanistic counterpoint to the rise of abstraction.

Born in Borisoglebsk, Russia in 1899, Soyer emigrated with his family to the United States in 1912. He settled in New York City, where he studied at Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League. Alongside his twin brother, Moses Soyer, he developed a lifelong commitment to figurative art.

During the 1920s and ’30s, Soyer became associated with the Fourteenth Street School, a group of artists dedicated to portraying the realities of working-class and immigrant life in New York. His subjects included laborers, artists, models, and solitary figures, rendered with empathy and psychological depth. Soyer remained committed to representational painting throughout his life, resisting the pull of modernist abstraction. His works, ranging from paintings, etchings, and lithographs, frequently focused on introspective moments and everyday encounters, rooted in personal connection.

He continued to work and exhibit well into the 1980s. Soyer died in New York City in 1987, leaving behind a legacy defined by its devotion to the human figure and the dignity of ordinary life.