Biography
Sonya Rapoport (b. 1923, Brookline, MA; d. 2015, Berkeley, CA) was a painter, new media, and conceptual artist whose work is characterized by groundbreaking experimentation with computers and data collection, collaboration with scientists and experts in the humanities, a fascination with categorization and systems of knowledge, a consistent reinvestigation of her own earlier work, and a profound feminist mission marked by strategic forays into male dominated fields. Her career represents a unique path from high modernist painting to contemporary conceptual and new media work.
The first woman to receive an MA in Fine Art at UC Berkeley in 1949, Rapoport’s Abstract Expressionist paintings were given a solo exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in 1963. She went on to explore pattern, painting on printed fabrics and developing a language of feminist stencils. In 1976 Rapoport began drawing on found computer printout paper, eventually leading to her reinvention as a digital artist. Her interactive installations of the early 1980s used computer programs to gather, process, and represent data. She was an integral part of a community of artists experimenting with and communicating via emerging computer technologies. Critical recognition of Rapoport’s contributions gained momentum in the last decade of her life.
Rapoport leaves a 66-year artistic legacy that includes works in a variety of media, including paintings, works on paper, performance artifacts, books, videos, and web art. Her name is recognized nationally and internationally through her participation in over fifty major exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (2006), Bienal de Arte, Buenos Aires (2002), Zero1 Biennial, Silicon Valley (2012), Violence Without Bodies, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2005), and Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany (1987). She was the subject of late-career retrospective exhibitions at KALA Art Institute, Berkeley (2011), Mills College Art Museum, Oakland (2012), The Fresno Art Museum (2013) and the book Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport, edited by Terri Cohn (Heyday, 2012). Her archives are preserved in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
About the Trust
The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust was established by artist Sonya Rapoport during her lifetime to steward her art estate, to preserve and contextualize the history of her studio art practice through a living archive, and to expand the cultural legacy of her work.
We maintain a collection of Rapoport’s art objects dating from the 1940s through 2015, including definitive collections of her computer-mediated interactive installations. We seek to expand the recognition of Rapoport’s practice by placing her artworks at appropriate institutions and with private collectors. We work with curators to plan exhibitions, and arrange artwork loans and copyright permissions. Interested parties are encouraged to view the collection by appointment.
A primary mission of the SRLT is to encourage scholarship & research. Available on this website are images of artworks, a brief history of Rapoport’s career, and primary source research materials.
The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust is directed by Farley Gwazda, who worked with Sonya Rapoport as an artists’ assistant during her lifetime, prepared her papers to be archived at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, completed the process of inventorying and preserving her work after her death, and has had the pleasure of working with curators, gallerists, and scholars on exhibitions and publications of Rapoport’s artwork. He loves to speak with anyone who is interested in Sonya Rapoport!
Partners
The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust has partnered with art advisors and historians Terri Cohn of Terri Cohn Art Services, and Alla Efimova, of KunstWorks.
We have worked extensively with Julie Casemore at Casemore Gallery in San Francisco, which currently represents a selection of Rapoport’s artworks.
The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust would like to express our deep gratitude to Sonya Rapoport’s daughter, Hava Fereres-Rapoport, without whose support none of our work would have been possible.
Land Acknowledgement
The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust is based in Berkeley, California, which sits on the territory of xučyun (Huichin), the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. We recognize that every member of our community has, and continues to benefit from, the use and occupation of this land.
Do you possess artwork by Sonya Rapoport that we might not be aware of? We would love to hear from you in order to place the work in its historical context: