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Europe

Deaf Arts, 1900 - 2000

1856 - 1937: Paul-François Choppin, Sculptor (FR)

Paul-François Choppin, born in Auteuil on 26 February 1856 and died in Paris (14th arrondissement) on 13 June 1937, was a French sculptor.

He lost his hearing at the age of two and remained deaf and mute throughout his life.

1867 - 1959: Johannes Graadt van Roggen (NL)

Johannes Mattheus Graadt van Roggen (Amsterdam, 28 May 1867 – Alkmaar, 26 August 1959) was a Dutch draftsman, painter and graphic artist.

Graadt van Roggen was deaf from the age of three as a result of meningitis

1870-1950: Peder Christian Pedersen, Painter (DK)

Peder Christian Pedersen was born on 12-10-1870 and died on 11-5-1950 in Aalborg. Ship paintings and other maritime environments were his specialty.

1872 - 1947: Jan Zoetelief Tromp (NL)

Johannes Tromp was born on December 13, 1872 in Jakarta (then Batavia). Tromp painted the daily lives of the fishing community, and especially pictures with children, showing them playing on the beach, shepherding goats or returning from the dunes. These scenes are all idyllic and resonate with a familial contentment that presumably reflected his own. 

1879 - 1963: Valentín de Zubiaurre Aguirrezábal, Painter (ES)

Valentin de Zubiaurre Aguirrezábal ( Madrid , 1879 - 1963 ), was a Spanish painter. He was born deaf, as was his brother Ramón de Zubiaurre , also a painter, three years his junior. Both were children of the musical composer Valentin de Zubiaurre Urinobarrenechea .

1881 - 1930: Maurycy Minkowski, Painter (PL)

Maurycy Minkowski was a Polish painter of Jewish ancestry, best known for his genre scenes of daily life in the shtetls. An illness he had when he was a small child left him deaf and without speech.

1900 - 1966: Richard Liebermann, Painter (DE)

1900 - 1966: Richard Liebermann, Painter (DE)

Richard Liebermann was born deaf and Jewish at Neu-Ulm in Bavaria.  He painted portraits and landscapes all across Germany, but when the Nazis came to power, he was prohibited from continuing his public career because of his Jewish ancestry.

1900 - 1972: Emerson Romero

Emerson Romero  was a Cuban-American silent film actor who worked under the screen name Tommy Albert. Romero developed the first technique to provide captions for sound films, making them accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing; his efforts inspired the invention of the captioning technique in use in films and movies today.

1916 - 1975: Ivan Štrekelj (Sculptor, Slovenia)

Ivan Štreklj (1916 - 1975) was a sculptor who studied under the great names of Slovenian sculpture.

1924 - 2003: Alexander Lobanov (RU)

Alexander Pavlovich Lobanov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Па́влович Лоба́нов; 30 August 1924 – April, 2003) was a Russian outsider artist. Born in Mologa (Russia) in 1924, Lobanov contracted meningitis before five years old and was left deaf and mute. 

For over fifty years he produced hundreds of works with very little variety in style or content.

1928 - ..: Peter Dimmel, Sculptor (AT)

1928 - ..: Peter Dimmel, Sculptor (AT)

Peter Hans Dimmel (born August 31, 1928 in Vienna) is an Austrian sculptor and functionary in various deaf interest groups. His life's work includes more than 170 works, including many sculptures and restoration work for churches, especially with the material bronze.

1931 - 1993: Dorothy

1931 - 1993: Dorothy "Dot" Miles, Poet and Activist (UK)

Dorothy "Dot" Miles (19 August 1931 – 30 January 1993) was a poet and activist in the deaf community. Throughout her life, she composed her poems in English, British Sign Language, and American Sign Language. Her work laid the foundations for modern sign language poetry in the US and UK.

She is regarded as the pioneer of BSL poetry and her work influenced many contemporary Deaf poets.