Ratkai, Helen

(1909-2001)

Helen Ratkai was a multi talented artist. She lived all of her adult life in New York city. She was a 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.