Raya Sorkine (1936-2022), Painting Hsc "firebird", Signed, XX

Decorative bas-relief painting, mixed media with metallic pigments in gold and silver on a black painted background, depicting a stylized "firebird," signed "Raya" lower right and dated. Label on the back. 20th century, circa 1970. Size 38*45 cm and 46*54 cm with frame. Raya Sorkine, born in Paris in 1936, remained in hiding during the war with his mother, a Russian Jewish immigrant, and with her family, whose name he adopted. This Slavic and Semitic atmosphere profoundly marked him. He constantly seeks it out and transcribes it through his canvases. Although born in France, he feels Russia flowing in his veins. A Russia he has never known except in the breath, in dreams, in the memory of his mother. Raya is, as they say, "a child of the theater." At the age of twelve, he left school and, barely aged At fourteen, armed with a small sketchbook, he set off on the roads like 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. Throughout 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 veritable pictorial firework display. Here we have a painter of joy and love, a quality that is deeply ingrained in his heritage. He is the heir to one of the richest revolutions in the history of art, having experienced classicism, impressionism, and neo-classicism, the explosion of modern art and its many schools, Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Marc Chagall. He paints at night, listening to “his music” (cosmic or religious). His painting is profoundly Slavic and profoundly Jewish.