Michael Rogatchi
Michael Rogatchi is a world-renowned artist, the European master of metaphorical expressionism, as well as prominent artist of a wide spectrum of lyrical art, and the author of original and powerful visualisation of music.
Art career
His approach to his own original art is based on his encyclopaedic knowledge of science, history and world culture and civilisation.
During his artistic career, Michael has held over 70 personal exhibitions, and his works belong to leading museums, public institutions and private collections worldwide, including the London Museum of Jewish Art, the UK National Art Collection, the New York Jewish Children’s Museum, the Permanent Art Collection of the Municipality of Jerusalem, the Permanent Art Collection of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Israel; the art collection of the Finnish Representative Office in Luxembourg; the Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Centre permanent art collection; the art collection of Il Pitigliani culture centre, Rome, Italy; the Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine Museum; the MHB SA Art collection, Paris; the art collection of The Prague Times, Czech Republic; the Laogai Museum in Washington DC, the permanent art collection of Children’s Hospital, Turku, Finland, the permanent art collection of hospice and house for elderly, Turku, Finland, the house of elderly of the Jewish Community of Finland, Helsinki, the Vilnius Public Jewish Library, Lithuania, the Culture Centre of the Jewish Community of Estonia, Tallinn, and many others.
Michael is the member of jury of Il Volo di Pegasso, Italian National Arts, Music and Literature Award, prominent annual art, culture and education event in Italy.
He is also permanent member of the Science & Art International Annual Conference in Rome which is a prestigious forum contributing to the mutual influence and harmonious co-operation in between science, medicine, psychology and arts. On this vital direction, the members of the Conference are developing many important contributions into well-being of people and societies.
Together with four other leading intellectuals from Italy, Switzerland and Finland, Michael is a founding member of Leonardo Forum, or Knowledge Network Society that develops international intellectual and artistic dialogue via conferences, forums, publications and art events, between science, medicine, psychology, music, literature and visual arts for the benefits of society.
Among his many other awards, in 2017 Michael was nominated by the European Parliament Members to become the one of the Lighters of the Flame of Glory in Israel, at the Independence Day, during the first such nomination ever taken from among the outstanding Jewish people outside Israel in their achievements and contributions.
In 2013, Michael has been awarded with the Award for the Outstanding Contribution in Arts and Culture by the New York Jewish Children’s Museum, the largest museum for children in the USA.
Michael had been awarded there alongside legendary chief of the New York Police Department Ray Kelly and a great musician of our time, pianist Evgeny Kissin.
Michael was the only living artist who had been invited to participate in the special Charity Gala of His Royal Highness Prince’s Trust in London (2011).
Michael’s personal exhibitions has become notable art events and part of the official cultural and educational tours in London, Florence, Rome, Warsaw, New York and many other major cultural venues of the world.
His artistic biography and career can be read in more detail on his site: https://michaelrogatchi.com/front-page/about-michael-rogatchi/
Alongside his well-developed and critically acclaimed lyrical paintings and works depicting the world of music and arts, the Jewish theme is essential for Michael Rogatchi’s art. He is the author of The Patriarchs & The Matriarchs, a unique series in the history of art; and is critically acclaimed for his distinctive style in his works of contemporary spiritual art comprising his Forefathers project.
Among the other themes related to the Jewish heritage, Michael is known for his series on the Holocaust and Jewish history, and also for his lyrical paintings on music, soul, and memory.
Michael’s works, which belong to leading British art museums, made it possible for his art to be included in the very selective and significant catalogue of the UK National Art Treasures completed by the BBC in 2012.
Personal story
Michael was born in 1953 to a Jewish family in the Far Northern East, in a place known as the Valley of Death, the horrible place of Stalin’s Gulag.
Following the destiny of Michael’s father, who was kept as a political prisoner in the Gulag concentration camp, following the death of Stalin, his family was expelled to Kazakhstan.
Overcoming many difficulties, Michael continued his education as an expert in biochemistry and graduated in 1980 from one of the best Soviet universities (Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine) as a Master of Science in neurochemistry.
Because of Michael’s scientific achievements, he was invited to work and to develop his scientific career in the world-famous Academic Institute for Experimental Medicine in St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). His research and studies were highly appreciated and widely published both in Russia and internationally.
While in St Petersburg, Michael also completed his artistic education. Throughout the 1980s, he studied under the mentorship of several leading artists, including Mark Smirnov, Irina Bruni, and others from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and the St Petersburg Theatre and Cinematography University.
Following his decision to switch from science to art, Michael started his artistic career as set- and costume designer for a number of the leading theatres in St Petersburg: the Komissarzhevsky Theatre, the Leninskiy Komsomol Theatre, and the Experiment Theatre.
Then in the late 1980s, he was deputy director and chief set- and costume designer for new, very successful and highly popular Narodny Dom (The People’s House) Theatre in St Petersburg. For his works there, he had been awarded in the early 1990s with many international prizes for the best set- and dress designs, in particular for a cult performance authored by his wife Inna, Playing the King.
In the early 1990s, this performance went on a first-ever charity tour of the Russian theatre abroad, with performances given in support of Amnesty International and the Finnish Cancer Society.
In the end of the 1980s, Michael moved to Finland with his wife Inna Rogatchi, an internationally acclaimed writer, scholar, film-maker and artist. They have both become Finnish citizens and are living and working in Finland, with intensive international travel and projects world-wide.
Michael is widely invited for teaching and conducting master-classes at various universities, cultural centers and art institutions in Europe, USA and Israel.
Philanthropy
Philanthropy has become the essence, meaning and form of life of Michael and Inna Rogatchi since the end of the 1980s. For over thirty years, the Rogatchi family led by Michael’s initiatives, is involved in wide spectrum of philanthropy internationally.
Implementing Michael’s idea, and in memory of their only daughter Julia-Yenike who died of cancer that was contracted as the result of the Chernobyl catastrophe, together, Inna and Michael founded the well-known international cultural charity: Arts Against Cancer (AAC), whose honorary chairman was maestro Mstislav Rostropovich. Among the members of this charity and its active supporters were Maurice Bejart, Sir Paul and Linda McCartney, famous violinist Vladimir Spivakov, the Queen Margreth of Denmark, Barbara Bush, and many other distinguished public figures worldwide.
After more than decade of very successful and intense activities of the AAC, the Rogatchis continued their philanthropy via The Rogatchi Foundation established in 2004. The Foundation focuses on promotion and support of educational, historical and spiritual heritage, and still supports cancer patients and those in need.
There are many publications and reviews with regard to Michael Rogatchi’s art.
His art book Shadows of White(2003) has become a modern classic in the genre of the artist’s own long essay commenting his works.
In connection with the publication of the book, the late Simon Wiesenthal who was very friendly with the Rogatchis, wrote to Michael saying: ‘I am glad that there are people like you who will continue to remind people’.
Today, Michael’s book has been widely acclaimed and is to be found in many libraries and museums all over the world.
There are also numerous other publications featuring different collections and series by Michael, published like art brochures, catalogues, collectible art calendars, and other various art publications.
Michael’s art was also presented in detail in TV programme Melody of Light: the Life and Art of Inna and Michael Rogatchi (JLTV, USA, 2013), an hour-long documentary profile of the Rogatchi artistic couple that has been produced and broadcast by JLTV, a major global TV channel based in Los-Angeles.
The new film about Michael, Dream, Memory, Love: The Portrait of the Artist is due to be released in 2021.
Michael’s art and activities are presented in full detail on his personal site: https://michaelrogatchi.com/
Inna Rogatchi
Inna Rogatchi is an internationally acclaimed writer, scholar, lecturer, film-maker and artist. She is active promoter of applied humanism and living memory.
She is the author of Outreach to Humanity and Culture for Humanity concept and projects of The Rogatchi Foundation.
Family
Inna’s family is related to the family of famous Austrian musicians Rose and also to Gustav Mahler. Inna’s great-aunt, outstanding violist Eleanor Rose had been the closest friend for life of the great film director Fritz Lang, the niece of Gustav Mahler and the first and close cousin of the famous musician Alma Rose who tragically died in Auschwitz.
Among the distinguished members of Inna’s immediate family, there were outstanding scientists: world-class expert on physical chemistry and nuclear science, academician Solomon Jelovich who played a pivotal role in the scientific assessment immediately after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions in 1945; and one of the world leading defence scientists, the father of precision-bombing mechanisms for aviation Solomon Buyanover.
Inna’s maternal great-grandfather Meer Chigrinsky was the man who personally saved the 50,000-member strong Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk in Ukraine from Stalin’s famine of the 1930s. The story about it is written in the well-known memoir of Rebbetzin Chaya-Mushka Schneerson, the wife of the Chief-Rabbi Yitzhak Schneerson and mother of the 7th Lubavitch Rebbe.
Several members of Inna’s family , including her great-grandfather and the family of his wife, were a key-figures in a close circle of the Rebbe Schneerson’s family in Ukraine for forty years, from the beginning of the XX century until the end of the 1930s.
Personal story
Inna has graduated with honours from the Dnepropetrovsk University in Ukraine at the end of the 1970s and worked on her dissertation as a philosopher and specialist on the behavioural aspects of biology and psychology. In parallel with her scientific research, she was always writing and being active in several genres of prose, poetry, and essays.
Following Inna’s husband Michael’s scientific career, the family moved to St Petersburg (then Leningrad) in the early 1980s where Inna gave up her scientific career and started to work in theatre as a dramatist.
Her years in the Academic Maly Drama Theatre led by Lev Dodin, the best and legendary late-Soviet theatre, enriched her significantly with regard to the qualified art and its approach.
At the same time, Inna continued to write actively, and became the arts editor for the Actors Union which has been known for its liberal views and inventive approach to creativity.
In the late 1980s, both Inna and Michael Rogatchi decided to try to apply their creative visions, and not less importantly, their moral stand using the opportunity to work in their own, semi-free under the late-Soviet conditions, theatre in St Petersburg, The People’s House.
Inna’s key play for the theatre, Playing the King, has become a super-hit in the late 1980s all over the former Soviet Union and abroad.
Inna has authored several more plays, as well. One of them, In the Mirror of the Zone, reflected on the theme of the human and moral response in any society to the situations prompted by a nuclear catastrophe.
In the unfolding of the family’s tragedy and while trying to save the life of their only child Julia-Yenike who had contracted cancer as the result of the Chernobyl catastrophe, the Rogatchis went to live in Finland in the end of the 1980s. Since that time, they have been living and working in Finland, with intense international travelling and many various projects world-wide.
Professional career
During her professional career, Inna has worked actively on several paths of knowledge and in the arts, including writing, journalism, studying and research, lecturing, film-making and art creation.
She has covered a wide range of subjects, including political and modern history, international affairs, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, Holocaust and post-Holocaust, Jewish spiritual studies, Jewish heritage, international terrorism and security, culture history, history of art, the arts, and human behaviour.
For about thirty years, she has been a senior foreign desk columnist and foreign editor-at-large for a number of leading Finnish, Scandinavian, Baltic and international media, currently concentrating on essays published regularly in leading European and American media outlets.
Inna is one of only two women among fifteen leading European politicians (including the president of the European Parliament, the prime minister of Finland, members of the EU Commission, and leaders of the political factions from the European Parliament) who contributed to the book Quo Vadis, Europe? published on the occasion of the launching of the pan-European electoral campaign for the new European Parliament. Fritz W. Ermarth, director of the National Security Programs at the Nixon Centre, and former chairman of the US National Intelligence Committee, has wrote of this essay that it “places Inna Rogatchi among the world-class strategic thinkers of the modern times.”
Inna is the author of several notable books, among which are: The Shattered Generation, or The Ten Commandments in the USSR (1992) a multifaceted, comprehensive analysis of Russian society and mentality, short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize, and acclaimed as “the best anti-totalitarian book ever published in Europe since the end of WWII” (by late Pekka Hyvarinen, former editor-in-chief of the leading Finnish magazine Suomen Kuvalehti); The Blind Mirror (1997) examines the relationship between the individual and the state apparatus through the prism of international intelligence activities during and after the Cold War. Yellow Star in the Red Sky (1995) a study of the roots and phenomenon of anti-Semitism in the USSR and in early post-Soviet reality.
Among Inna’s forthcoming books are collections of her essays on re-addressing Holocaust and legacy of post-Holocaust, and on Art & Humanism. Inna also works on several important projects on modern history, including legacy and lessons of Simon Wiesenthal and saga of her Rose-Mahler-Bujanover family.
In her capacity as scholar and lecturer, Inna has created and taught several special courses for universities (history and international affairs departments), focusing on the inter-weave of culture, mentality and history. She lectures widely on various topics in many leading international institutions such as the UN, the European Parliament, various national Parliaments, the Institute of the World Politics (USA), and many others.
She is also a noted historian on Holocaust and post-Holocaust which is important part of her studies and her public activities.
Inna actively participates in many international conferences on cultural heritage and history presenting her papers on various subjects widely .
She was a member of the board of the Finnish National Holocaust Association, and is the member of International Advisory Board of Rumbula Project ( USA).
As an academic advisor, for many years Inna was advising senior members of the European Parliament, many European Parliaments and their members, as well as leading international companies and the companies and institutions on international affairs and to multi-sided and innovative management of crisis situations.
Working as a film-maker – being producer, director and author of several internationally acclaimed documentaries -, Inna focuses on a first-hand portrayal of historical personalities and phenomena of modern times. Among her films is The Lessons of Survival: Conversations with Simon Wiesenthal( 2013-2014) which has been successfully shown world-wide. The film was attested as “riveting” by the Israeli media, and as “timeless” by Ambassador Harri Mäki-Reinikka of Finland.
About this film and more of Inna Rogatchi’s films can be read in more detail on Rogatchi Films site at https://www.rogatchifilms.org/
Inna is also an internationally acclaimed artist with many exhibitions held world-wide, and her works being exhibited in museums, public institutions as well as private collections in many countries. She is twice laureate of the prestigious Italian National Arts, Music and Literature Award ( 2016 and 2017).
She works in the style of metaphorical expressionism infusing poetic images with its philosophical meaning. She is also known for special cultural-educational projects such as Shining Souls. Champions of Humanity, The Route, The Legacy of Light, The Beauty of the Torah, and many others.
Inna is known for her contribution into the artistic interpretation and intellectual studies of many themes of Jewish heritage, including the Bible and Jewish Mysticism.
She is inventor and promoter of Lux Sei Art ©, a particular direction of fine arts that provides psychological comfort. Her works in that genre have been successfully applied in Finland, Italy, the UK, Japan, Spain, the USA and other countries. She had donated many of her works created in this direction to the leading medical organisations in Finland, Israel, Italy, the UK, and the other countries.
More about Inna’s works as an artist and her artistic career can be read at her site Silver Strings dedicated to her art activities: https://innarogatchiart.com/
In her philanthropic activities with her husband artist Michael Rogatchi, Inna co-founded both Arts Against Cancer (AAC) and later The Rogatchi Foundation.
Among Inna’s public recognitions, in 2013 she was awarded by The New York Jewish Children Museum International Award for Outstanding Contribution in Arts and Culture, with her husband Michael Rogatchi.
Inna is the only woman and the third person who was recognised by the Patmos Solidarity Award ( 2014) for ‘her life achievements in the hard-labour of memory’.
She is also bearer of the Special Diploma of the Chicago Film Festival and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Centre for her ‘outstanding contribution into the international Holocaust education”.
More about Inna Rogatchi and her activities can be read on her general site: https://www.innarogatchi.com/