Konstantin Rodko

Who was Konstantin Rodko?

Konstantin Rodko was a Latvian painter who was based in the United States. Rodko's parents were Belarussian and Estonian. He married his first wife in Latvia and had four children. During World War II they had lived in Germany until they were able to leave from Bremerhaven on 19 August 1950 on the USS General Harry Taylor, and arrived in New York four days later. It was in America his painting talents came to prominence and sold them on the streets of New York. Rodko lived in Brooklyn with his children and then divorced his first wife and remarried a woman by the name of Kate Dennison. She too was a painter and the couple sold their works alongside each other.

They moved to Sea Cliff, Long Island, a close neighbor to Glen Cove. There he lived on the second floor of a Russian school. His second wife made many miniature paintings and Rodko painted his best works there. He would sell and give paintings as gifts to his four children. He also loved to play and listen to Russian gypsy music and folk music, paint Russian scenes and speak Russian, which is why many thought he was Russian. He was a multi-instrumentalist, and Kate was a tailor who loved her cats. She considered the animals as her children but she adopted his children from his previous relationship. Rodko had seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Toward the end of the 1980s, Rodko moved to Brentwood, Long Island until Kate died of a stroke in 1984.