| Soshana Afroyim | |
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Soshana Afroyim in her studio in Paris, 1956 |
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| Birth name | Susanne Schüller |
| Born | September 1, 1927 Vienna, Austria |
Soshana Afroyim (born 1 September 1927, Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian painter. As an artist of the Modernism period, she devoted her life to art and travelled around the world, where she had many exhibitions. During her journeys, she portrayed many well known personalities and her art developed in different directions. Her early period artwork was largely naturalistic in nature, showing landscapes and portraits, they later developed towards abstract art, strongly influenced by calligraphy.
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Soshana was the first born child of Margarethe and Fritz Schüller. Born as Susanne Schüller during the interwar period, she later married the much older painter Beys Afroyim (who would later become known for the case of Afroyim v. Rusk). Fritz Schüller was the owner of a factory producing men’s imitation jewellery and Margarethe Schüller was an artist. From 1933, Susi, as she was known to her parents, attended the Schwarzwald school and spent much of her free time in the Viennese Burggarten with her brother Maximilian. Her first contact with art already took place at a very young age, when her mother collected her first drawings and paintings.
Soshana's normal childhood ends in March 1938 with the annexation of Austria to Germany by Adolf Hitler. Together with her children, Soshana's mother fled to Switzerland, then Paris. In 1939 they reached England where they remained for two years. Soshana attended the Northwood College and in 1940 the Chelsea Polytechnic School in London, where she had painting and drawing lessons and learned about fashion design. At the age of 12, Soshana, who had experienced both the invasion of Hitler's troops in her native Vienna, as well as the Blitz in London, expressed her feelings in paintings. She made a drawing of Hitler, calling it "Hitler as a Clown". In 1940 she drew a series of paintings in London about the Blitz.
Fritz Schüller did not flee with the rest of the family to Switzerland but from Paris, via Spain to North Africa, then to America. In 1941 he succeeded in bringing his family into the United States. In New York City Soshana attended Washington Irving High School and began painting under the guidance of artist Beys Afroyim.
Aged 17, with Beys Afroyim, the young artist travels through America. During these journeys they portrait writers, musicians, statesmen and scientists like Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Lion Feuchtwanger, Theodore Dreiser and Hanns Eisler. When the United Nations Conference on International Organization is opened in Mai 1945 in San Francisco, the artist couple portraits well-known delegates, such as the substitutional chairman of the UdSSR national planning commission Kuznecov, Vasilij Vasil’evič.
In 1945 Soshana and Beys Afroyim married. In 1946 their only child, a son, was born in New York.
Because of her husband's activities within the Communist Party of America the couple left the USA and spent some time in Cuba where Soshana had her first exhibition in Havana in 1948 in the Circulo de Bellas Artes. From that time on she uses the artist name Soshana. They later move to Europe and eventually to Israel.
The couple divorced in 1950. Soshana decided she didn't want to live her life as a traditional housewife. She returned to Vienna in 1951, where she entrusted her son to her father’s care.
In 1951 she enrolled at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and in 1952 she switches to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she paints under the guidance of Prof. Sergius Pauser, Albert Paris Gütersloh and Prof. Herbert Boeckl.
She did not finish her art studies. In 1952 she moved to Paris and worked in the former studio of the French artist André Derain. Later she moved to a studio next to that of the artist Brancusi at Impasse Ronsin.
In Paris she made the acquaintance of the Czech painter Kupka, the French artist Auguste Herbin, the painter and sculptor Ossip Zadkine, the French sculptor César, the French painters Pignon and Bazaine, the German artist Max Ernst, the French artist Yves Klein, the American sculptor Alexander Calder, the artists Wifredo Lam, Sam Francis, the French philosopher/writer Jean Paul Sartre, the Indonesian painter Affandi and Marc Chagall.
The Ecole de Paris and the Informel influenced her art work. In 1956 Soshana works in the former studio of Paul Gauguin which had previously been used by the Czech artist Alfons Mucha. It is situated in the Rue de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse.
In the Salon de Mai she met Pablo Picasso for the first time. He invited her to visit him in Vallauris, where he spent much time in the 1950s. There he paints a portrait of Soshana in 1954 and honours her art work with his statement: "Soshana, je trouve qu'elle a du talent" ("I find Soshana has talent").[1] In Paris, Soshana had exhibitions in various salons, such as the Salon de Mai, the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and a number of exhibitions in the André Weil Gallery.
In 1956 she visited Asia, including Japan, China and India. She is highly interested in Indian philosophy, Hinduism and Buddhism.
She was strongly impressed by the art of calligraphy and learns art techniques on rice paper from Buddhist monks in Kyoto and Chinese painters in Hangzhou. The art of calligraphy becomes formative for her painting style. In 1958 she is invited to have an exhibition in the Emperor's palace in Beijing.
In 1959 the artist travels through Africa, where she painted Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, eventually returning to Paris. In Italy in 1960 Soshana works together with the artist Pinot Gallizio in Alba del Piemonte. Together they produce some artworks that demonstrate mutual inspiration. "In a letter written by Gallizio to his gallerist Otto and Heicke Van de Loo in Munich, he announced 'that 20 paintings were made in September 1959 in Paris, together with Soshana', adding ‘resultat formidable’.”[2]
In 1964 Soshana traveled to Mexico for various exhibitions, living in Cuernavaca for a while. She became friends with important Mexican artists such as Rufino Tamayo, Siqueiros, Cuevas and Mathias Goeritz. In 1965 she met Adolph Gottlieb for the first time and later in New York, they develop a deep friendship. The year after, in 1966, an exhibition of her work takes place in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, which is one of the most important cultural establishments of Mexico.
During the course of her second journey round the world in 1968 Soshana visits the South Seas, the Caribbean, Thailand, Bali, Australia, India, Sikkim, Nepal, Afghanistan, Iran and Israel. In Sikkim in 1969 the royal house entrusts her with painting portraits of the king and the queen of Sikkim and the same year she becomes member of the Theosophical Society.
In 1972 she moved to Jerusalem where she plans four exhibitions in the Old Jaffa Gallery but they are cancelled due to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. Soshana leaves Jerusalem and in 1974 she moves to New York.
From 1974 to 1985, she lived and worked in New York City, where she met Mark Rothko, Francesco Clemente and the patron of the arts Joseph Hirshhorn.
She returned to Vienna in 1985, and produced collections of videotapes and audiotapes and started writing about her life and the development of the international art scene. She continued traveling until 2005, when her health no longer allowed her to do so. Worldwide public access to her artwork in Vienna is possible every year through at least one exhibition. In 2008 the Austrian National Library took over her creative estate, comprising manuscripts, photos, letters, documents etc.
On 2 September 2009, Soshana received the Merit Award in Gold of the Province of Vienna and on 27 May 2010, she was honoured with the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art by the Republic of Austria.