Artist: Moses Soyer (American, 1899-1974)
Title: Black Mini Skirt
Size/Dimensions: 18 1/8 x 14 inches
Frame type/size: Gilt wood frame, 26 x 22 inches
Medium: oil on canvas
Date created or painted: unknown
Signed: signed “M Soyer” upper right
Provenance: private California collection; Bonhams, NYC
Please note the wear to the frame.
 
Moses Soyer was an American social realist painter. Soyer studied art in New York with his twin Raphael, first at Cooper Union, and continued his studied at National Academy of Design. He diverged from his twin and attended Educational Alliance. He later studied at the Ferrer Art School under the Ashcan painters Robert Henri and George Bellows. He had his first solo exhibition in 1926 and began teaching art the following year at the Contemporary Art School and The New School. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Moses and his brother Raphael engaged in Social Realism, demonstrating empathy with the struggles of the working class. In 1939, the twins worked together with the Works Project Administration, Federal Art Project (WPA-FAP) mural at the Kingsessing Station post office in Philadelphia. Soyer wrote a weekly column for a Yiddish newspaper called "In the World of Art". Soyer married the dancer Ida Chassner; they had one son, David Soyer, the cellist of the Guarneri String Quartet. Soyer's works can be found in most major museums in the United States.