Marion Ranyak
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Marion Lorraine Ranyak | |
|---|---|
| Born | 25 January 1925 |
| Died | 22 August 2018 (aged 93) |
| Education | Wheelock College |
| Known for | Painting |
Marion Lorraine Ranyak (25 January 1925 — 22 August 2018)[1] was an American painter who lived and worked in Rye, New York, and was a founding member of SOHO20.[1]
Born Marion Hannig in New York City, she was the daughter of William A. Hannig and Carolyn Exner Hannig.[1][2] 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.[2][3] Her mother operated a successful family-owned sand and gravel company.[2][3] In 1950, Marion Hannig married John A. Ranyak;[4] they divorced in the mid-1970s[5]
In 1946, after an unsatisfactory educational experience at Wheelock College,[1][3] Marion Ranyak spent six weeks in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she studied with the painter Hans Hofmann.[5] The result, she said, was a "very strong feeling of the two-dimensionality of the surface" which was "always there" in her paintings.[5] Ranyak also began to travel—to California, France, and eventually Italy.[3] 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.[3] Reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, as she later noted, "gave me a support that I got nowhere else in my life."[3] Ranyak identified as a feminist and supported many liberal causes.[1]