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    Artist

  • Ratkowski, Anne, 1903-1996

    • Title

  • [RF Kennedy Campaigning in Southern US]

  • Physical Description

    1 painting : oil on canvas ; 61 x76 cm. ; 24 x 30 in

  • Date

    between 1967 and 1997

  • Notes

    Signed lower right

  • Summary

    Copied from an untitled photograph. Robert F. Kennedy offers a handshake to a man wearing a red hat, his arms crossed. In the background, two men and a young girl look on from a platform while a woman in a blue-green robe stands nearby.

  • Depicted

    Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968

  • Subject

    Handshaking; Politicians; Statesmen

  • Genre

    Portraits

  • Medium

    Paintings; Oil paintings

  • Accession Number

  • URL

Biographical/Historical Information

The American Democratic politician Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on November 20, 1925, the seventh child of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Kennedy, and younger brother of President John F. Kennedy. He served as US Attorney General from 1961 to 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from 1965 to 1968, when he became a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Shortly after winning the California primary on June 5, 1968, Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan and died the following day, June 6, 1968.

Anne Ratkowski (1903-1996) was born Anneliese Ratkowski and grew up in an upper middle class home in Berlin, the daughter of a physician. She showed artistic talent from an early age and received formal training from 1915 to 1920. While at the art school, she studied under and then became a lifelong disciple of the painter Arthur Segal. Ratkowski gradually established herself as a painter during the 1920s, praised by critics as a young, promising talent. With the support of Arthur Segal she showed her work in several group shows organized by the Novembergruppe (November Group), a loose union of radical artists. She was married to fellow member of the November Group, Nikolaus Braun, from 1920 to 1938. In 1938, because of impending Nazi persecution, Ratkowski burned her work and fled Germany. By 1939, she was in Antwerp, Belgium, where she hid and survived under most difficult circumstances until the war's end. She also married Paul Wangenheim while in Belgium. The couple soon after changed their last name to Wanger and emigrated to New York City in 1948. Ratkowski made a living selling crafts. She returned to art making and showed her work in various smaller exhibits in New York during the 1970s. Her name had been completely forgotten in her homeland, though Ratkowski was rediscovered in Germany by Eberhard Roters, then director at Berlinische Galerie, while preparing an exhibit titled "Emigrated from Berlin." In 1988 the Leo Baeck Institute showed a Ratkoswki retrospective, followed by several exhibits abroad.

Related Works in the LBI Catalog

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Citation

Ratkowski, Anne: [RF Kennedy Campaigning in Southern US], Leo Baeck Institute, 97.26.