Ratkai, Helen

(1909-2001)

Helen Ratkai was a multi talented artist. She lived all of her adult life in New York city. She was well regarded painter who studied at the Art Students League under Yasuo Kuniyoshi. While she exhibited in New York in the early 1940s, she essentially ended her career as a painter deferring to her husband artist George Ratkai. She did some commercial graphic work, but entered a new phase of her creative abilities by starting a business designing and outfitting Steiff animals, a business aimed at adults and wildly popular in the finest department stores of the times. Helen and George were perhaps the most loving examples of a successful marriage. It was a real pleasure to have known both of them for the last fifteen years of their lives.