Biography of Raya Sorkine
Raya Sorkine is born in Paris, 20ème arrondissement, on June 22th of 1936.
The mutual adoration of
mother and son gave the painter Raya SORKINE his pseudonym, for Alain signs his
pictures with his mother’s given name and surname.
Raya and his mother (1940) His mother holding flowers
His childhood was steeped in the stories and customs of his ancestors,
and this Central-European Jewish culture resounds trough out his paintings,
illuminated as they are by traditional Jewish festivities and music.
Raya and his parents in Jerusalem (1981) His parents in Neuilly (1972)
But his work cannot be
limited to this influence which, though it is certainly primordial, is not be
only one. In his canvases, Raya SORKINE mingles all the elements of the
cultural differences he has known since childhood and adolescence. France, the
many suns and splendours of his journeys in spite of the horrors of wartime,
and the tragic turning points of his century were to enable him while still
young to interiorize and mark, with his own personal seal his “magnificent”
fist works, a crossroads, the meeting place of multiple paths.
The tireless traveller
was to cross Europe, stopping only to draw inspiration now from the twilit moon
skies of Sweden, now from the hot blazing of the suns of Provence, and go on and
on, adding to his palette an ever deeper, ever-widening knowledge of the world
and of man.
Ten years in this caravane In Köping inside his Torp, with his wife
exchanged for 2 paintings -Sweden (1966) Françoise - May 1968
Yet he reminds a man, and four women and seven daughters will enable him
to draw even more from the well-springs
of his own being – they are all his muses. Women, at their weddings, bearing in
their arms the eternal bouquet of flowers his mother holds in the photograph
that is always present before the eyes of this artist with the art of a child.
His daughters Delhia, Deborah Raya and Manou
His daugthers Rebecca et Olivia Raya and his daughters Delhia Deborah
The eyes of his
characters express the pain of century’s martyrdom, and it is in the brightness
of his violent colours that you can read his hymn to life, even though this
life is wounded and broken by the horrors of the Shoa.
But Raya SORKINE can
also save us from forgetfulness by his mastery of the art of having his clowns juggle, his violinists play, by all these
Russian Jews that live forever though
their movements, the reds and yellows that they must have longed to embody down
the years.
These groups of contrasts
and contraries blend in a perfect harmony from which springs an art as lively
as it is mystical, bursting with a life that inspires dreams, in quest of all
the forgotten, frozen moments of the past, the universal memory of mankind.
These women, men,
portraits of Rabbis, all engaged in or escaped from a recent past, are brought
back to life by the burst of bright colours, magical yellows, reds, and blues
that cannot but point us towards a reflective, serene optimism.
It is the colour-language of a true “Sabra” that enthralls us.
