Lottie Kagan-Rustchuk was born in July 1895 in Russia to a Jewish family who encouraged her art studies, sending her to England to complete her education. She immigrated to London in 1914 and trained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and then at the Slade School of Art. She was a prolific sculptor, showing with the Society of Portrait Sculptors, and exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy of Arts and with Ben Uri, among other venues.
Sculptor Lottie Kagan-Rustchuk was born in July 1895 in Russia to a Jewish family who encouraged her art studies, sending her to England to complete her education. She immigrated to London in 1914 and trained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and then at the Slade School of Art. In 1923, she married Selik Roustchouk, and they changed their surname to Rustchuk, becoming British citizens in 1931.
As a portrait sculptor, Kagan-Rustchuk exhibited her work regularly across the UK during her life time, notably with the Society of Portrait Sculptors, Ben Uri Gallery, and the Royal Academy of Arts Annual Summer Exhibitions in London, participating in the latter on at least eight occasions, from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of her noted pieces, My Punishment is Greater than I Can Bear was exhibited at the 1936 summer exhibition. According to the press, the sculpture was damaged in transit. Kagan-Rustchuk described the incident as follows: ‘I was bringing my statue to the Academy in a car, […] when suddenly there was a traffic jolt and collision. The jolt was a disaster for me, for it broke both the hands off my statue. I was very upset, and nearly took it home there and then in despair, thinking that nothing could make it fit for the Academy after such an accident,’ (Sunderland Daily Echo, p. 4, 1936). However, Kagan-Rustchuk then went to the waiting room of the Academy and managed to repair her sculpture just before the show and it was displayed as planned. Her 'broken-then-repaired' piece was then featured again at the 123rd Exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1949.
She exhibited her work at Ben Uri over three decades in group shows from 1935 onwards (the year of the first open exhibition held by the Society for contemporary Jewish artists). During the 1950s, she exhibited on a number of occasions with the Society of Portrait Sculptors, where her subjects included the Jewish mathematician, Selig Brodetsky, and Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Russian-born Zionist who had died in 1940; she had shown his portrait soon after his death at the RA Summer Exhibition in 1941. In 1957, the Jewish Chronicle noted that her bust of Brodetsky, though sculpted 25 years previously, had finally found a permanent home at Beth Brodetsky in Israel (The JC, 1 January 1957, p. 6). In 1965, following his death, her bust of Winston Churchill was exhibited at the main entrance of Hendon Public Library in aid of the Churchill Memorial Appeal.
Lottie Kagan-Rustchuk died in Hendon, London in 1974 at the age of 79. There are no known works by her in UK public collections.