Olga Rapai-Markish

One of the most famous figures in Ukrainian ceramics. She was the daughter of the poet and playwright Perets Markish, shot in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and the philologist Zinaida Joffe, repressed as a “family member of a traitor to the Motherland.” In 1953 Olga herself was arrested as a daughter of enemies of the people and exiled to Siberia and then northern Kazakhstan, before being released in 1955.

She returned to her studies and in 1956 earned a diploma as a sculptor. She worked in decorative plastic art and, from the late 1960s, mainly in monumental decorative sculpture — fantastic animals and birds, architectural ceramics, panels, reliefs and anthropomorphic vases.