Soyer, with his twin, Moses, was brought to America by his parents in 1912. The family lived first in Philadelphia, and then settled in the Bronx, New York. The twins and their younger brother, Isaac, drew and painted from childhood. Soyer studied at the Cooper Union from 1914 to 1917, then entered the Academy's school where he studied with Charles Curran and George Maynard. He was much quoted as saying that the first thing he did on leaving the Academy school was to forget everything he'd been taught there. However, in an article written shortly before his death, he tempered that to a description of the instruction as "dull," but that it was to the Academy library that he owed his discovery of Edgar Degas. Soyer finished his study at the Academy in the spring of 1922. He had studied under Guy PŠne du Bois, whom he considered the teacher who had most influence on him, at the Art Students League for a few months in the 1920-21 season, and returned to his class, again for a few months, in 1923; his last period of study at the League was a month under Boardman Robinson in 1926.
In the first years after finishing his formal study, Soyer worked at various jobs to earn his living and painted at night. Alexander Brook introduced him to the Whitney Studio Club, where he had his first opportunity to show in group exhibitions. His first solo exhibition was at the Daniel Gallery in New York in 1929; sales from it enabled him to give up his odd jobs, and turn fully to painting. From the early 1930s when his work began to be regularly included in the major annual and biennial exhibitions around the country, his career developed steadily. His first award was received in the 1932 annual exhibition of the Art Institute of Chicago. He first received an Academy award, the Clark Prize, in the annual exhibition of 1945; it was followed by Obrig prizes in 1947 and 1952, the Clarke Prize again in 1948, the Carnegie Prize in 1949, and the Isidor Medal in 1975.
Soyer first taught at the John Reed Club, New York, in about 1930. He was at the Art Students League the season of 1933-34. He returned to teaching at the League, 1935-42. After the second World War he taught for several years at the American Artists School, and then was on the faculty of the New School for Social Research from 1957 through 1962. His last period of teaching was two season, 1965-67, with the Academy school.
Soyer came to be considered America's leading examplar of a realist tradition, although his somber figure studies, portraits, and city street scenes were definitely of a twentieth century aesthetic in their muted color harmonies, and softened outlines. While he wrote and spoke widely of his dissatisfaction with the rising tide of abstraction in its various forms, it was as a steadfast spokeman for an older tradition, not narrow, polemical attack against any opposition. In 1953, in an open letter he at once expressed his criticsm of abstractionist art, and the motivation of his own art: "This arbitrary exploitation of a single phase of painting encourages a contempt for the taste and intelligence of the American public . . . . We believe that texture and accident, color, design and all the other elements of painting are only the means to a larger end, which is the depiction of man and his world."
