Raya SORKINE

Born in Paris in 1936, Raya remained hidden during the war with his mother, a Russian Jewish immigrant, as well as with his mother’s family, whose name he adopted.

This Slavic and Semitic atmosphere had a profound influence on him. He never stops looking for it and recreating it through his paintings.

While he was born in France, he feels Russia flowing in his veins. A Russia that he has never known except in the breath, in dreams, in the memory of a mother. Raya’s family played an important role in his creative development. 

At the age of twelve, he left school and, at the age of fourteen, with a small sketchbook, he set out on the road as a nomad. He slept under the stars.

Europe, Scandinavia, the Middle East … he went everywhere, drawing or painting. Later, he bought a caravan to continue his travels.

During his wandering life, which lasted nearly twenty years, he scattered his numerous paintings around the world, married four women and had seven daughters.

Raya Sorkine presents the viewer with a real visual firework display. We have here a painter of joy, of love that reflects his heredity.

He is the witness of one of the richest revolutions in the history of art, having experienced classicism, impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, the explosion of modern art and its multiple schools, Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall.