Page 32 - Studio International - June 1965

Oscar Rabin Soviet solitary

by Jennifer Louis

Oscar Rabin is 37. He is lean and his glance is intense. Glasses hide Apart from the pictures on the postcards. the boy had a much­
the laughter lines around his eyes and the look of severity is loved book of paintings by Mikhail Vrubel. The romantic images
increased by a neat moustache and a close-shaven head. He thinks appealed strongly to him and he copied the devils and mermaids
of himself as a realist because he fills his canvases with scenes and sprites of the Russian forest as well as he could. Much later
from the world around him. but what he sees there is strictly when he saw the originals he was happy to meet old friends, but
individual and his way of painting what he sees is all his own. the witchcraft had left them and they did not affect him so deeply
The story of his life is simple and he tells it calmly, looking fondly as the reproductions had done. Visits to the Tretyakov Gallery
back on the things that meant much to him and shrugging off the introduced him to other artists whose works impressed him too;
unpleasantnesses with the composure of an observer rather than Nesterov·s fairy-tale pictures with slender birches and gentle­
the stoicism of a participant. Oscar was born on 2nd January, faced nuns on the high river banks, Le·1itan's and Savrasov's
1928. the only child of professional parents, both practising landscapes and the quiet sympathy with which Shishkin treated
Moscow doctors. His father died when he was five and when he his forest subjects. Rabin comments, ·1 still love those artists even
was eleven his mother insisted that he enter a music school. He now, when I know more of the world of art than I did then·.
studied the violin there for three years because he had to, but at Although the music lessons were brought to an end by the out­
the same time, and just because he wanted to, he attended draw­ break of war, the drawing classes Rabin's mother died
ing classes and learned how to tackle a still life. he was fourteen but about th ti he was befriended by
At home he worked on different lines, copying picture postcards. the o artist and art ma and he began
One of the first of his own pictures to fill him with a real sense of to le much t was to He discovered what h had
achievement depicted the moon shining down on to dark houses to suspect stu of had
with their windows all aglow. The original postcard was a apart f th o it re right
German one which looked like any other until you held it up to in his enjoyment of darkness and lighted that lines and
the light when the moon and the windows lit up like real ones. ma had too that we waiting
Rabin is still at his happiest with this theme and says he finds great for explore more and and
pleasure in moonlight and the contrasting warmth of human appreciate the roughness canvas sur-
windows. Walking home in the evening he is sensitive to the faces he got by painting over other thickly painted pictures.
Unr,1/ed Patnttng 1961 difference between the friendly light in the windows of his own Rabin's mother had come fro Latvia and it was to he sister in
Oil on Canvas
25 X 31 1n. home and the mysterious lights which belong to strangers. Riga Ra wa next

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