Raymond Breinin

Modern painter Raymond Breinin was born in Vitebesk, Russia, and studied art with Uri Pen at the Vitebebsk Academy of Art there as a young man. His family immigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago, where Breinin continued his art studies at the Art Institute and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and worked various jobs to support his family. During the Depression he painted murals under the auspices of the WPA. Beginning in 1939, he was represented by the Downtown Gallery in New York, and eventually moved to that city. Breinin taught at the University of Southern Illinois, the Art Students League, and the National Academy in New York. His works are in the Fogg Museum of Art; Cambridge, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.