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Early
Life
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Both
Hans and Margret Rey were born in Hamburg, Germany -
Hans Augusto Reyersbach on September 16, 1898, and Margarete
Elisabeth Waldstein on May 16, 1906. Hans received an
old-style humanistic education and studied Latin, Greek,
French, and English. Although art was not a part of
his studies, he loved to draw and did so at a very young
age. The drawing of horses in the park shown here was
done when he was just eight years old. Hans, better
known by his initials, "H. A.," served in the German
Army during World War I and was stationed in France
and Russia.
In the early 1920's, H. A. and Margret met at a party
at her parent's house. He was dating her older sister
at the time, and his first sight of Margret was of her
sliding down the banister. (Listen
to Hans tell the story.) |
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H. A. Rey
1898-1977
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Margret Rey
1906-1996
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In
1924, due to the increasing inflation in Germany,
H. A. moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to work as
an accountant in his brother-in-law's import-export
firm. Among other duties, he sold bathtubs and kitchen
sinks up and down the Amazon River for 12 years.
Meanwhile,
Margret was still in Germany, where she received formal
art training at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927, when
Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky were on the faculty.
She also studied at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts
from 1928 to 1929 and held one-woman shows of her
art in Berlin in the early 1930's. Margret worked
for a British advertising agency in Berlin, where
she wrote the lyrics to the first jingle for a Lever
brothers advertisement in praise of margarine. She
also worked as a professional photographer in Berlin
and London before moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1935.
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"Horses
in the Park" watercolor, 1906
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