People

One of the most outstanding artists found in Bialystok after the II world war outbreak. A student of Tadeusz Breyer at Wasrsaw Final Arts Academy in 1931-1936. After the graduation and thanks to the scholarship he was traveling around Italy and France. In June 1939 he came back to Poland. At that time artistic exhibitions were part of olimpic games and his prize-winning sculpture "The tennis player" were supposed to be exposed at the Berlin olimpic exhibition. However, the author did not agree to that and had to give the prize back. After the outbreak of II world war Natan Rapaport settled in Bialystok and appointed by the occupation authorities he was making sculptures of labour heros and local authority figures. In unknown period of time he left to Minsk, then he lived in Tashkent and in Soviet labor camp in Novosibirsk. In 1946 he was repatriated and came back to Warsaw and together with the architect Leon Mark Suzin he began working on Warsaw Monument of the Ghetto Heros. The monument was unveiled in April 1948. In 1950 Natan Rapaport emigrated to Paris and then moved to Israel. In 1959 he moved to New York where he received his US citizenship in 1956. Nata Rapaport, together with Izaak Celnikier and Zygmunt Messer, was among those few artists who found their refugee in Bialystok and survived the war.