Samuel Rabin (artist)
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
Representing  Great Britain
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| Men's freestyle wrestling | ||
| Olympic Games | ||
 |
1928 Amsterdam | Middleweight |
Samuel (Sam) Rabin, originally Samuel Rabinovitch, (20 June 1903 – 20 December 1991) was an English sculptor, artist, teacher, singer, wrestler and Olympic bronze medalist.
Rabin, who was Jewish, was born Samuel Rabinovitch on 20 June 1903 at Dewhurst Street, Cheetham, North Manchester. He was the son of Jacob Rabinovitch (1872–1962) and Sarah Rabinovitch (née Kraselschikow, 1879–1961), both Russian Jewish exiles from Vitebsk (now in Belarus). His father was a cap cutter and later a wholesale milliner; his mother was a jewellery assembler.
During his childhood, the family moved to Salford where Rabin grew up and where his parents encouraged his talent for drawing. In 1914 Rabin won a scholarship to the Manchester Municipal School of Art making him, at the age of 11, the youngest pupil ever to attend the college. There he was taught drawing by French artist Adolphe Valette. In 1921 he moved to the Slade School of Fine Art in London where he continued his studies under Henry Tonks until 1924.
In about 1935, Rabin married Ida Lily Shuster, but they were divorced. In 1956, he married Frances Kaye (formerly Lucienne Karpeles, 1917–1988). The couple had one son, David, born in 1960.
After the Slade, Rabin studied in Paris where he met and was greatly impressed and influenced by sculptor Charles Despiau.
Rabin's own sculpture from this time is little known as he was a perfectionist and destroyed work that he considered unsatisfactory. In 1928, working under his full surname, he was commissioned by architect Charles Holden to carve West Wind, one of eight personifications of the four winds for the headquarters of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London at 55 Broadway. The sculpture was partly completed in-situ on the building. In 1930, he produced his only other public sculptures; two decorative winged masks, The Past and The Future, for the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. These were carved on the building directly from the scaffold.
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