Boris Deutsch

Boris Deutsch, a figurative and expressionist painter, born in Krasnogorka, then part of the Russian Empire, was educated at the Bloom Academy of Fine Arts, Riga, and completed postgraduate work in Berlin. He came to United States in 1916 landing in Seattle and then lived and painted in Los Angeles.[1] He worked for Paramount Pictures in the special effects department. He also taught advanced painting at Otis Art Institute for about six years. In 1924 he married (Rebecca) Riva Segal.[2] He was also a good portraitist and among his subjects were Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson. During the late 1930s he received several mural commissions from the Section of Painting and Sculpture, including Hot Springs, New Mexico Post Office, Reedley, California Post Office, and 11 murals in the U.S. Post Office-Los Angeles Terminal Annex, a Spanish Colonial Revival building opened in 1940 next to the completed Union Station.[3]

He also was director of a 15-minute experimental and expressionist film Lullaby, starring Michael Visaroff, created in 1929. It relates the story of a young servant, played by Deutsch's wife, Riva, who is abused by her Christian masters until she falls in love with a musician and escapes.[4][5]

Deutsch died in Los Angeles on January 16, 1978.

Boris Deutsch was a modernist painter who studied art in Berlin and so was deeply unfluenced by German expressionism. He uses intense colours and his brushwork is typically free and highly textured with a tendency to the geometrization of forms, however he never forgot his love for figurative art which undoubtedly had its apogee in his mural paintings. He sometimes painted also in cubist and surrealist styles. All his works tend to be emotional, full of sentiment and phatos.[6][7]

• "Three Jews" Watercolor, graphite, and charcoal, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco[8]
• "Abstraction" Oil on canvas, 1923, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art[9]
• "Self-portrait" 1921, oil on canvas mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum[10]
• "Sleeping Woman" 1925, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum[11]
• "The Tailor" 1927, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum[12]
• "Indian Bear Dance (Color Study for Hot Springs, New Mexico) ca. 1940, crayon, watercolor, and colored pencil on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum
• "Portrait of artist wife" oil on canvas. 1942, San Bernardino County Museum[13]
• "Man with Flute" Oil on canvas 1946, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, California[14]
• "Self portrait" Oil on canvas, 1927, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, California [15]
• "Female Portrait - Riva" Oil on canvas, 1929, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, California[16]
• "Portrait of a Women reading" Oil on canvas, 1934, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, California[17]
• "Portrait of Riva" Oil on canvas, 1931, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, California[18]
• "Cultural Contributions of North, South and Central America" 1939–1944, eleven tempera on plaster lunettes, U.S. Post Office-Los Angeles Terminal Annex, California. To note self-portrait and portrait of Riva in the lunette "The astronomical research"[19]
• "Indian Bear Dance, Truth or Consequences", 1938, oil on canvas mural, Geronimo Retail Unit, 300 Main Street, New Mexico, Post Office.[20][21]
• "Grape Pickers", 1941, oil on canvas mural, Reedley, California post office building.
• "Female head", 1930, mixed media,
• "Sleeping woman - Riva -",1925, watercolor,