Opening on Thursday 5th February at BEN URI GALLERY Boundary Road London ‘Sam Rabin: The Art of the Ring’ an exhibition celebrating the extraordinary life and work of artist, sculptor, teacher, opera singer & Olympic athlete Sam Rabin.
Sparked by the publication and book launch of ‘Sam Rabin’ by Bill Crow and the accompanying exhibition at Jack House Gallery in 2024 this exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery is the biggest collection of Rabin artworks brought together from private and public collections since the major retrospective at Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1985 and features a major recent find that was believed lost forever unseen since 1928.
As so often happens with exhibitions and proof if it were needed of just how important galleries are the exhibition and book launch ‘Sam Rabin’ by Bill Crow about the artist Sam Rabin here at Jack House Gallery, Portsmouth, in 2024 and the connections and the conversations brought to the gallery by visitors rather naturally led to this new exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery in London. Whilst at the time a personal ambition to show the work of Rabin, an artist who inspired me in the 1980s, was fulfilled I was also delighted to meet and talk with former students - a lot of former students - from his years teaching in Bournemouth post his departure from Goldsmiths and was given a insight into the personality and importance of an influential and much loved teacher. These were primary witnesses to the man’s forceful presence and personality and as has so often been the case in my gallery experience one thing leads to another and the excitement generated by the sudden visibility of a neglected artist prompted us to go in search of further opportunities to show more of Sam Rabin.
