Ruth Duckworth
Encyclopedia
Ceramic art
In art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean art objects such as figures, tiles, and tableware made from clay and other raw materials by the process of pottery. Some ceramic products are regarded as fine art, while others are regarded as decorative, industrial or applied art objects, or as...
. Her sculptures, as well as wall sculptures and monumental works, are mostly untitled. She is best known for Clouds over Lake Michigan, a wall sculpture.
Early life and education
Born Ruth Windmüller on April 10, 1919 in HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, she took up drawing after a doctor recommended that she remain homebound to improve her health. She was the youngest of five children. The oldest, a brother, had promised to watch over her for the rest of her life but was killed when his ship was sunk by a Japanese submarine. The daughter of a Jewish mother and a Lutheran father, she left Germany to study at the Liverpool College of Art
Liverpool College of Art
Liverpool College of Art is located at 68 Hope Street, in Liverpool, England. It is a Grade II listed building.The building is currently owned by Liverpool John Moores University housing its School of Social Science....
in 1936 as she could not study art in her home country under the restrictions imposed by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. She later studied at the Hammersmith School of Art and at the City and Guilds of London Art School
City and Guilds of London Art School
The City and Guilds of London Art School is an art college in London, England, United Kingdom. It is one of the country's longest established art colleges, and offers courses ranging from Foundation, through B.A. degree, Postgraduate Diploma and M.A...
, where she used the stone carving skills she learned there to decorate tombstones. When she applied for art school she was asked if she wanted to choose to focus on drawing, painting or sculpting and insisted that she wanted to study all of them, after all Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
did all three.
Ceramist
Inspired by an art exhibit of works from India, Duckworth studied ceramic artCeramic art
In art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean art objects such as figures, tiles, and tableware made from clay and other raw materials by the process of pottery. Some ceramic products are regarded as fine art, while others are regarded as decorative, industrial or applied art objects, or as...
at the Central School of Arts and Crafts starting in 1956. While her early ceramic work was in traditional forms, she started to produce more abstract works that incorporated materials such as pebbles and rocks. Her work started to fall into a middle ground that wasn't the typical ceramics thrown on a wheel and fired in a kiln or the standard forms of sculpture that used metal, stone or wood. As described by ceramist Tony Franks
Tony Franks
Tony Franks is an English ceramic artist. He was born in Birmingham, and studied ceramics at Wolverhampton College of Art from 1962 until 1966. He was previously Head of Ceramics, and is now an Emeritus Professor and Research Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art. Until 2007 he was the President of...
, Duckworth's style of "Organic clay had arrived like a harvest festival, and would remain firmly in place well into the '70s". While ceramists such as Bernard Leach
Bernard Leach
Bernard Howell Leach, CBE, CH , was a British studio potter and art teacher. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery"-Biography:...
rejected her work, other artists in the UK started adopting her style of hand worked clay objects.
Joining the faculty of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
in 1964 gave Duckworth the opportunity to create grand pieces that included swirls and cloud patterns. Her mural series Earth, Water and Sky (1967-68) was commissioned by the university for its Geophysical Sciences Building and included topographical designs based on satellite photographs with porcelain clouds overhead.Her 1976 work Clouds Over Lake Michigan is a figurative depiction of the Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron...
watershed and is on display at the Chicago Board Options Exchange Building. While at the University of Chicago, Duckworth had a studio in the Pilsen neighborhood in the Lower West Side
Lower West Side, Chicago
Lower West Side located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of 77 well-defined Chicago community areas.-Government and infrastructure:The United States Postal Service operates the Pilsen Post Office at 1859 South Ashland Avenue....
of Chicago.
She remained in Chicago after retiring from the university in 1977 and moved to a space in the Lakeview
Lakeview, Chicago
Lake View, or Lakeview, is one of the 77 community area of the Chicago, Illinois, located in the city's North Side. It is bordered by West Diversey Parkway on the south, West Irving Park Road on the north, North Ravenswood Avenue on the west, and the shore of Lake Michigan on the east...
neighborhood on the city's North Side, in a former pickle plant. She had a hole in the floor of her second-floor living quarters, which allowed her to view works in progress in her studio and to envision how they would look on a wall. There she created large bronze works for Eastern Illinois University
Eastern Illinois University
Eastern Illinois University is a state university located in Charleston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1895 as the Eastern Illinois State Normal School, a teacher's college offering a two-year degree, Eastern Illinois University gradually expanded into a comprehensive university with a...
, Lewis and Clark Community College
Lewis and Clark Community College
Lewis and Clark Community College is a comprehensive community college in the Metro-East region of Illinois in Godfrey, enrolling 13,500 credit students and more than 33,000 total students annually....
and Northeastern Illinois University
Northeastern Illinois University
Northeastern Illinois University is a public state university located in Chicago, Illinois. The main campus is located in the community area of North Park with three additional campuses in the metropolitan area. Tracing its founding to 1867, it was first established as a separate branch of a...
.
A retrospective of her work Ruth Duckworth: Modernist Sculptor opened in 2005 at New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Museum of Arts & Design before traveling to other museums across the country. In 2006, her works were featured at the Art Expo at the Seventh Regiment Armory
Seventh Regiment Armory
The Seventh Regiment Armory, located at 643 Park Avenue also known as in New York, New York, United States, is an historic brick building that fills an entire city block on New York's Upper East Side.- History :...
in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
.
There is a documentary about the late sculptor titled Ruth Duckworth: A Life in Clay.
Death
Duckworth died in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
at age 90 on October 18, 2009, at the Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care after a brief illness.
External links
- http://www.artnet.com/artist/5491/ruth-duckworth.html
- http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_11_93/ai_n15979877
- Washington Post article