Word: rattner
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Never before had the workmen at Barillet's-the leading stained-glass studio of Paris-known anyone quite like the intense, wild-haired American artist who had come to them in 1958. Abraham Rattner, 65, was embarked on the most ambitious project of his life, and he seemed unable to tear himself away from it for a minute. He pored over Jewish holy books for inspiration, spent each day at Barillet's rejecting and selecting pieces of glass, watching every move the artisans made as they went about their centuries-old task. The result was worth the effort...
...congregation of the New Synagogue could not have found a man more fitted for the commission, for though Rattner is not an orthodox believer, his Jewish heritage and faith are often the fire behind his art. Born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the son of a moneyless baker who had fled from Russia in the 1880s, young Rattner gathered bits of coal along the railroad tracks to heat his parents' home, took whatever odd jobs came along. But what he remembers most vividly about the Poughkeepsie of his youth was the penalty of being Jewish. Only after a kindhearted Irish...
...school of contemporary art; for the painters whose works are shown, it means acceptance into the top ranks of U.S. artists. This week the Corcoran opened its 23rd biennial show-a lavish spread of 226 paintings-and announced the four prizewinners. The $2,000 First Prize went to Abraham Rattner's glowing Composition with Three Figures (opposite). A pleasantly romantic still life by Hobson Pittman took second money, Francis Chapin sailed in third with Regatta at Edgartown (opposite), and William Congdon came fourth with a chic peek at Venice, done in glimmering impasto...
...Artist Rattner, 57, was a camouflage engineer in World War I, returned to Paris after the armistice for 20 years of advance-guard painting. He came home in 1940, now teaches at the University of Illinois. His prizewinning picture looks as if it might have been intended to represent the Crucifixion, camouflaged, or seen through stained glass darkly. But Rattner's explanations are never that simple. Says he: "It is rather an idea related to the need to give men hope and encouragement, and involving the conflicting things that we are confronted with today in our hearts and souls...
...Chicago's Francis Chapin is a cheerful conservative with his feet firmly planted in the dazzle of impressionism. "I chose the regatta as a subject," he says, "because it was just plain old pictorial." His prizewinning result, as light and easy as Rattner's is dark and difficult, proves that there is nothing wrong with such a modest ambition. Taken together, the two paintings speak well for the scope and vitality...