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Violetta Raditz was the first child of a young and artistic Philadelphia couple. Her father, Lazar Raditz, a Russian
émigré, was a highly respected portrait painter; and her mother, Henrietta Herman, an accomplished pianist. A precocious
and ebullient child, her natural talent encouraged and abetted by a home environment filled with music and art, Violetta
demonstrated an unusually mature ability and prolific propensity for drawing and painting. So much so, that five of her
pencil and crayon works on paper won inclusion in the 1920 juried exhibition of the Philadelphia Watercolor Club at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Violetta was eight years old at the time.
The current exhibition at Luise Ross Gallery features this early period of the artist’s work. The subject matter suggests
a developing fascination with things theatrical, and may be traced to Violetta’s attendance with her parents at musical
and dramatic performances and museum exhibitions of the day.
Other self-taught luminaries included are: Minnie Evans whom God came to in a dream and said “draw or die”; Leroy Person
who carved designs in any wood that he could find; Bill Traylor who drew memories from rural life in Alabama; Lonnie Holley
whose poetic vocabulary in transforming found objects is legendary; Tyyne Esko from Finland, whose politics and love of
nature are revealed through her poetic sensibility; Thornton Dial whose coupling of figures and animals is always sensitive
yet powerful; Louis Monza whose mastery of a variety of mediums is used to express his political and social beliefs; and
Thomas Burleson whose inner struggles are transformed into brilliantly colored, complex puzzles.
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