Alek Rapoport

In the 1970s Rapoport joined the non-conformist movement, which opposed the dogmas of "Socialist realism" in art, along with Soviet censorship. The movement sought to preserve the traditions of Russian iconography and the Constructivist/Suprematist style of the 1910s. Despite the authorities' persecutions of nonconformist artists (including arrests, forced evictions, terminations of employment, and various forms of routine hassling), they united in a group, "TEV – Fellowship of Experimental Exhibitions." TEV's exhibitions proved tremendously successful.[2]

In the same period, Rapoport became one of the initiators of another anti-establishment group, ALEF (Union of Leningrad's Jewish Artists). In the United States this group was known as "Twelve from the Soviet Underground."[3] Rapoport's involvement with this group increased tension with the authorities and attracted KGB scrutiny, including "friendly conversations," surveillance, detentions and house arrests. It became increasingly dangerous for him to live and work in the USSR. In October 1976, Rapoport with his wife and son were forced to leave Russia.

Following the usual path among Russian immigrants of that time, the family traveled through Austria and Italy, then moved to the U.S. They lived in Italy half a year. Despite missing Russia, Rapoport savored his exposure to Italian culture and art, which had intrigued him since childhood. The entire environment strongly inspired his mind and creative work.[4]

In Italy, Rapoport exhibited at the Venice Biennale, "La Nuova Arte Sovietica-Una prospettiva non-ufficiale" (1977),[5] participated in television programs about nonconformist art in the Soviet Union, and created lithographic works continuing his theme of Jewish characters from Babel's play Sunset.

In 1977, Rapoport's family was granted U.S. immigration status and settled in San Francisco. With assistance from the Bay Area Council of Soviet Jews (BACSJ), Rapoport traveled to many American cities as a representative of the "ALEF" group, known in U.S. as "12 from the Soviet Underground," accompanying exhibitions of these artists and lecturing.[6]

Rapoport grew up in the anti-religious Soviet environment. An encounter with the New Testament at age 16 led his first creation of religious artwork. Beginning in the 1960s, images of the Biblical prophets emerged as a recurring theme in Rapoport's art.[7] His inspiration came from various sources: the stories of the Old and New Testaments, the art of Russian (Byzantine) icons as well as the humanistic art of Renaissance, and Russian religious philosophers such as S.Bulgakov, N.Berdyayev, V.Solovyov. Among this latter group, Rapoport had a special regard for Father Pavel Florensky. Rapoport dedicated his painting Short Life of Euphrosynos the Cook (1978) to the memory of Florensky, who perished in a Gulag in 1944.

For almost nine years, Rapoport was employed as a draftsman-designer of stage equipment, while continuing his own creative work. Initially overwhelmed by a sense of freedom in his new life, he soon came to feel that these liberties restricted more than they permitted, with freedom limited to the narrow views of artists who followed the demands of the market. He experienced difficulty fitting into the American contemporary art mainstream, which he considered frivolous, career-oriented and devoid of any spirituality or artistic merit.[8][9]

For Rapoport, the 1980s were a time full of creativity and significant life events. He participated in numerous exhibitions in San Francisco and other American cities, sold his paintings in auctions in Europe and the U.S., illustrated Erotic Tales of Old Russia by A.Afanasyev (Scythian Books, Oakland, CA), and traveled to European countries. A visit to Spain made a profound impression on him, confirming a sense of personal connection, even blood ties, with the art and culture of the country of El Greco. Rapoport began a new series of paintings inspired by his experiences in Spain.

In 1984, a significant event in Rapoport's life occurred in his meeting with San Francisco gallery owner Michael Dunev,[10] who became his friend and representative, organizing all his exhibitions until the artist's death.

Rapoport tried to make a connection to bridge the gap between his art and the American viewers, a goal perhaps reflected in his new series of paintings, Images of San Francisco. While in Russia, Rapoport had concentrated on interior and spiritual subjects; in San Francisco, he broadened his art with new sources. He valued the city's international flavor, theatrical and dramatical image, phantasmal ocean-accented light and geographical structure, capturing these qualities with his characteristic forced spherical perspectives and expressionistic coloration, evoking a sense of a spontaneous theater of everyday life. Images of San Francisco came to constitute a second major body of subjects in Rapoport's art.

At the same time, the idea of "brotherhood" and artists "guild" had always attracted Rapoport, and he particularly missed this sense of fellowship while in the U.S. Accordingly, in 1992, he organized the group "SPSF"(Saint Petersburg-San Francisco). SPSF consisted of two artists and two photographers, all St. Petersburg natives who had wound up in San Francisco. The four saw themselves as heirs of the great St. Petersburg cultural tradition, while also having absorbed the new San Francisco environment. Their exhibitions were enthusiastically received by Russians and Americans.[11]

In 1987, Rapoport was finally able devote himself completely to his creative work. While his subject matter did not change, his works increased in emotional impact and his technical skills became fully developed.

Toward the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, Rapoport completed his most ambitious works on the theme of the Old Testament prophets: Samson Destroying the House of the Philistines (1989), Lamentation and Mourning and Woe (1990), the four paintings Angel and Prophets (1990–1991) and Three Deeds of Moses (1992).

In 1992, the artist's friends in St. Petersburg organized the first exhibition of his works there since his departure into exile, with works patiently gathered from collectors and art museums. This exhibition, held in the City Museum of St. Petersburg and accompanied by headlines such as "A St. Petersburg artist returns to his town," was followed by much larger ones in 1993 (St. Petersburg and Moscow),[12] organized in collaboration with Michael Dunev Gallery under the name California Branches – Russian Roots. The exhibitions, with an invitation featuring Rapoport's painting Self-portrait as a Mask of Mordecai (1985), marked the artist's first visit to Russia since his departure in 1976.

Rapoport had always protested loudly and openly. In Russia, he protested against the rigidity of the system of teaching, against the communist ideology and censorship in art, against the suppression of religious art. He took a leading part in the creation of the dissident art groups TEV and ALEF. For this he was persecuted by the authorities and forced to emigrate.

Then, in the U.S., Rapoport protested against commercialism in art, against the dominance of ideas of market over ideas of spirit, against the crushing of religious art by public indifference, against the loss of Judeo-Christian values. "In search of these values, I turn again and again to the Old Masters from the Mediterranean region, where at the very outset of Western Civilization, the art of Pictorial Image was born, art in which both the Divine Spirit and the Human Being served as the measure for all things." This was the subject of Rapoport's "loud and bitter cry."

The last five years of Rapoport's life (1993–1997) were spent in voluntary seclusion. He did not endure emigration easily. "What a pathetic life, everything repeats itself," he said, quoting from the letters of Albrecht Dürer, another artist who saw himself as born in the wrong place and time.

During these years, Rapoport concentrated on his own creative world. In his own words, he worked not for the sake of art, but because art gave him the means to express himself. He sought to reach the very core and heart of the image, an urge complemented by his ever-present inner desire to attain the ideal.

In 1995, he began an association with CIVA (Christians in Visual Arts), participating in the group's exhibitions and conferences. He produced more expressionistic paintings on religious themes, while continuing his ongoing series Images of San Francisco. His works became increasingly spiritual and magically expressive. The art critic V.Baranovsky (Moscow-San Francisco) noted, "One can not leave unnoticed the strange power of these paintings, which remind us of the incandescent coals of Old Russian icons."

Anastasis-1, 1996

By 1996, the artist almost never left his studio, completing Anastasis 1, based on the apocryphal fourth-century Gospel of Nicodemus. The painting was his final and most personal religious work.