Moses Soyer

The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Places of work recorded in the authority are New York City. Work by Moses Soyer is recorded in the collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Detroit Institute of Arts.

• Name — Moses Soyer • Birth Name — Moses Schoar • Born — 25 December 1899 • Birthplace — Borisoglebsk, Tambov Governorate, Russian Empire • Died — 2 September 1974 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Movement — Social Realism • Spouse — Ida Chassner Soyer • Children — 1 • Education — Cooper Union, National Academy of Design, Educational Alliance, Ferrer Center and Colony • Known for — Painting • Family — * Raphael Soyer (twin brother) • Isaac Soyer (brother)

• Illustration — Untitled painting by Moses Soyer, Honolulu Museum of Art Soyer was born Moses Schoar and both he and his identical twin brother, Raphael, were born in Borisoglebsk, Tambov Governorate, a southern province of the Russian Empire on December 25, 1899. Their father, Abraham Shauer, a Hebrew scholar, writer and teacher, 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. Their cousin was painter and meteorologist Joshua Zalman Holland. The difficulties faced by the Jewish population in the late Russian Empire forced the Soyer family to emigrate in 1912 to the United States, where they ultimately settled in the Bronx. The family name changed from Schoar to Soyer during immigration. Soyer married in 1922 to Ida Chassner, a dancer. Together they had one son, David Soyer. Dancers were a recurring subject in Soyer's paintings. Soyer studied art in New York with his twin Raphael, first at Cooper Union, and continued his studied at National Academy of Design. He diverged from his twin and attended Educational Alliance. He later studied at the Ferrer Art School under the Ashcan painters Robert Henri and George Bellows. He had his first solo exhibition in 1926 and began teaching art the following year at the Contemporary Art School and The New School. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Moses and his brother Raphael engaged in Social Realism, demonstrating empathy with the struggles of the working class. In 1939, the twins worked together with the Works Project Administration, Federal Art Project (WPA-FAP) mural at the Kingsessing Station post office in Philadelphia. Soyer wrote a weekly column for a Yiddish newspaper called "In the World of Art".