Marion Lorraine Ranyak (25 January 1925 — 22 August 2018) was an American painter who lived and worked in Rye, New York, and was a founding member of SOHO20.

Early life and education

Born Marion Hannig in New York City, she was the daughter of William A. Hannig and Carolyn Exner Hannig. Her father was a public school principal and later a member of the Board of Examiners (1921–53), an agency in New York City that set personnel standards for administrators and educators. Her mother operated a successful family-owned sand and gravel company. In 1950, Marion Hannig married John A. Ranyak; they divorced in the mid-1970s In 1946, after an unsatisfactory educational experience at Wheelock College, Marion Ranyak spent six weeks in

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown () is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States census, Provi ...

, where she studied with the painter Hans Hofmann. The result, she said, was a "very strong feeling of the two-dimensionality of the surface" which was "always there" in her paintings. Ranyak also began to travel—to

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

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, and eventually

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. While her husband was enrolled at MIT and she was raising their three children, Ranyak had little time to paint; she ceased for 14 years but resumed work in 1962. Reading Betty Friedan’s '' The Feminine Mystique'', as she later noted, "gave me a support that I got nowhere else in my life." Ranyak identified as a

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

and supported many liberal causes.

Work

Ranyak was a founding member of SOHO20 (est. 1973), the second all-women, artist-run art gallery in New York City. At SOHO20, she initially exhibited painted geometric abstractions and cement "sandcastings," but an interest in

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

led her to explore more realistic views of nature. Her small paintings of pebbles, stones, rocks, grass, and leaves—exhibited at SOHO20 in 1978—emphasize flatness through simplified but precise forms. Ranyak's acrylic paintings were positively reviewed in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' by Vivian Raynor, who described her landscapes as "modest" but with "an air of authority." Raynor later wrote that Ranyak "makes Neil Welliver look like an Expressionist." Ranyak was praised by another critic for her ability to suggest texture while using flatly applied acrylic paint, as in ''Nova Scotia—Grassy Slope'' (1985). Her later paintings of fields in upstate New York were well received by Michael Brenson, who wrote, "She touches the canvas as delicately as a bird … The light in her paintings is always at that point of gray heat that sets everything in a landscape in motion." Ranyak remained a full member of SOHO20 until 1988 and continued as an associate member until 1995. In later years, she lost interest in the urban art scene and exhibited primarily in

Westchester County, New York Westchester County is a County (United States), county located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, bordering the Long Island Sound and the Byram River to its east and the Hudson River on its west. The c ...

. She died on 22 August 2018, in

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, outside of New York City. It is the sixth-most populous city in New England. Stamford is also the largest city in the Western Connecticut Planning Region, Connecticut, Weste ...

)

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ranyak, Marion American feminist artists 20th-century American women artists 20th-century American painters 1925 births 2018 deaths Wheelock College alumni 21st-century American women