A

Journey

into

the

Modern

Art:

Leepa-Rattner

Museum

of

Art

According to Charles Baudelaire To say the word Romanticism is to say Modern Art -that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every
means available to the arts. One couldnt agree more while entering into a modern art
museum, where the colors go wild, the shapes take life, and the lines guide us into an
infinity of universes formed by the essences of pure emotions such as pain, sorrow,
happiness, anger, nostalgia, freedom, peace, and so on; all of them coexisting together
and embracing us in an new concept of art that we may think as impossible at first. This
is Modern Art. Some art museums have a story behind them, some have the artists
story behind them, and some others have a cause. The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Arts
has

it

all.

Established in 1996 and opened to the public on January 22, 2002, with its 53,000
square-foot the Leepa-Rattner museum is the result of a project started by Allen and
Isabelle Leepa who, in collaboration with the Tampa Museum of Art, donated art from
Abraham Rattner's and others artists, forming the collection that is still showed today,
becoming that way an emblematic symbol of modern art in the Florida state. Simulating
the bow of a ship, as post-modernist nod towards Tarpon Springs' fishing and
spongingcommunities, the building project is a piece of art itself, have made possible
thanks to the cooperation of the award-winning architect E.C. Hoffman Jr. who
designed it, and by Creative Contractors, Inc. who built it, giving a permanent home to
a 6,000 piece collection that includes works from Rattner, Allen Leepa himself, Esther
Gentle (Rattner's second wife) Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Auguste
Herbin, Georges Rouault, Hans Hofmann, and Max Ernst as well. The museum was
meant to be a tribute to the family of artist who made possible its creation: Abraham
Rattner, his second wife Esther Gentle, and her son Allen Leepa; as well as a
contribution of art and culture to the community, today it is by being the greatest and
most

complete

collection

of

Rattners

art.

Behind every museum there has to be the artists story to complement it. Abraham
Rattner was born on July 8, 1893 in the center of a Jewish family, he dreamed to be an
architect before he actually became an artist. Like every artist, Rattner was very
emotional; in his case, his religion, fears and concerns were one with his art, leaving a
strong impact on his work, forming a distinguish and unique style that was easy to
recognize and read, to the point for others to almost clearly feel what he was going

through only by looking at a paint that he made under a deep emotional status; hisuse
of intense and rich color, combined with his surrealist, and abstract impressionist style
would allow this, and also to differentiate several phases of his life because those were
marked by important in some cases painful experiences. For example, because he
served in the army he was able to live the horror of World War I, therefore some of his
painting have strong and vigorous anti-war messages such as in the Holocaust and
Parade; he lived in Paris, which also influenced his painting as we can see in his
Harlequin and Untitled (Fleur de Misre); moreover, he had a truly devotion for his
wife Bettina, making her, sometimes, the main subject of his paintings, a famous one is
Double Portrait, but when his beloved wife died his life as an artist fell into a deep and
black hole of depression, defining a new phase in his art as well, characterized by
painting tributes to his wife, using dark colors, and a sorrowful perspectives that we can
see in In Memory of my Beloved Bettina. Also, his works were very influenced by his
religious beliefs, and we can see that in works like Job no. 2, Ezekiel in the Valley of
the Dried Bones and of course his masterpiece The Last Judgment focusing on
things like pain, desperation, hope and war also. For all this is easy to imagine why he
was considered the Painter of the Tragic. Rattner wasalways likely to experiment with
his art, using different kind of media such as lithographs, tapestries, sculptures,
paintings and stained glass, as well as different techniques, so he was not only a
master of Abstract Expressionism, but he also explored Cubism and Surrealistic styles,
demonstrating

his

versatility

as

creator

and

modernist.

The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Arts is an amazing experience to the senses and to be

in touch with the marvelous understanding of modern art, it commits to excellence in
visual arts education for all agers thanks to its Challenging the Modern Art gallery, and
it preserves an exhibits not only the art of Abraham Rattner, Esther Gentle, Allen Leepa
but of their contemporaries as well as it will keep doing it with other artists that are yet
to

come.

In conclusion, the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Arts is a perfect combination of the

passionate story behind the artists and every piece of their work, a cause for education
and culture, as well as a link between the developing of Modern Art and its future. Like
Allen Leepa said: In art as in life, we respond with meaning. Something important to us
generates emotion. The artist evaluates and edits his responses. In the process of
painting, he translates them into visual equivalents on a canvas. We in turn, as
spectators, monitor both artists responses and our own.