Olga Peretsivna Rapai-Markish, sculptor-ceramist, was born on August 1st, 1929 in Kharkiv. Between 1948 and 1956 she had been Max Gelman’s student at the Kyiv Institute of Fine Arts. Since 1956 till 1965 Olga had worked at KEPAC (Kyiv Experimental Plant of Artistic Ceramics). During these years she had created about one hundred works of art, and took part in both republican and international exhibitions. In 1960 she became a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.
Olga’s highly cultural family felt all the terrors of the totalitarian regime. Her mother, Zinaida Yoffe, a student of the academic Oleksandr Biletskii and a gifted philologist, died young. Olga’s father was Peretz Markish, a Jewish poet, dramatist and novelist who wrote in Yiddish. He died tragically in Stalin’s torture chambers. Olga Rapai herself was deported to Kazakhstan.
At all the stages of her life, art was the main source of support for Olga, as was the help ofpeople she was dear to. Her husband, sculptor Mykola Rapai, accompanied her in the exile. After the couple had returned they became friends with the artistic family of Yakutovych’s, and they preserved this friendship for a lifetime.
Olga worked with porcelain sculptures, ceramics decoration, monumental ceramics, and various forms of ceramic plastics. The artists’s works are preserved in the reserves of Culture Ministry of Ukraine, of the Union of Artists of Ukraine and also in private collections in Ukraine, Russia, Switzerland, and Israel.
The sculptor died on February 1st, 2012 in Israel.
