Raya Kruk was born into a Jewish family in Libau (now Liepāja), Latvia, in 1925, and grew up in Memel (now Klaipėda, Lithuania); she survived the Kaunas Ghetto in Lithuania during the Second World War. During the early postwar decades she remained in the Soviet Union, producing stained glass windows and mosaics for many public buildings. Kruk immigrated to Israel in 1972 and subsequently to England, where she settled by the mid-1970s. Raya Kruk died in England in 1999.
Painter, printmaker and maker of stained glass, mosaics, enamels and ceramics, Raya Kruk was born in Libau (now Liepāja), Latvia, in 1925, and grew up in Memel (now Klaipėda, Lithuania) within a Jewish family. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, she and her mother were confined to the Kaunas Ghetto in Lithuania, surviving there until its liquidation in 1943-44. During the postwar decades, Kruk remained in the Soviet Union, establishing herself as a visual artist working in the tradition of monumental and applied art. She produced stained glass windows and mosaics for many public buildings (Marylebone Mercury, 5 December 1980). In 1972, she emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel and subsequently to Western Europe, aided by an exhibition of her work held at the Rotunda Gallery, London, which raised support to enable her departure (Jewish Chronicle, 1 January 1975). An exhibition at the Galerie Royale in Paris in November 1974 marked one of her earliest presentations in the West.
After settling in England in the mid-1970s, Kruk took up a lectureship at Ulster College of Art and Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her practice ranged widely across media, encompassing painting, printmaking, monotypes, enamels, stained glass, mosaics, murals and ceramics, and she continued to develop new technical approaches throughout her career. Having trained and worked within the Soviet tradition of monumental and applied art, she brought an unusual range of skills to her practice in Britain. By 1980, she had added enamels as a central medium, describing it as a form that brought together many of her other preferred media (Marylebone Mercury, 5 December 1980). A reviewer of her 1977 exhibition at Queen's University, Belfast, described 'a personal, compelling show' of paintings, monotypes and enamels, marked by imagery of ancient walls and solitary human figures that was far removed from the prevailing local scene in Northern Ireland (Belfast News-Letter, 23 November 1977). By early 1975, she was showing paintings and monotypes at Arts 38, Homer Street, London (Jewish Chronicle, 1 January 1975). In 1976, Kruk held an exhibition at Ben Uri Art Gallery in London. The following year she presented a solo show of paintings and enamels at the Social Sciences Building, Queen's University, Belfast. In 1980, she showed stained glass, mosaics and murals at the Drian Galleries, London, founded by Polish emigre, Halima Nalecz.
Kruk's practice extended across Europe and the USA. Together with her husband, the journalist and film critic Albert Klein, she produced films on the theme of exile for the German television network ZDF (Tagesspiegel, 1999). In 1989, a retrospective of her paintings, graphic work and enamels from 1973 to 1989 was held at the Kunstforum der Grundkreditbank in Berlin, and in 1992 she held an exhibition of paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Malta, from where the Museum acquired her ceramic work Three Masks of Mardi Gras. The memory of wartime Jewish experience found sustained expression in her art: her Vilna Ghetto graphic series (1973), five prints from which are held by the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, bears witness to this dimension of her practice. Kruk was also a writer on art and Jewish history: she co-authored a study of the Jewish actor Alexander Granach with Albert Klein (Hentrich, Berlin, 1994), and her memoir of survival in the Kaunas Ghetto, Lautlose Schreie: Berichte aus dunklen Zeiten, was published by Fischer Taschenbücher in Frankfurt am Main in 1999
Raya Kruk died in 1999 in England. Kruk's works are held in UK public collections, including the Naughton Gallery at Queen's University, Belfast; she is also represented in the collections of the Jüdisches Museum Berlin and the Museum of Fine Arts, Malta. The Ben Uri Research Unit welcomes contributions from researchers or family members who may have further biographical information.
Michal Mel