Ruth Schloss (1922-2013), Old Woman At Table, Circa 1990

Ruth Schloss (1922 Nuremberg - 2013 Kfar Shmaryahu), Old Woman at a Table, circa 1990. Mixed media on watercolor paper, 32 cm x 24 cm, signed lower left "Schloss" and lower right again in Hebrew. In a mat.
- in very good condition



- Shaded view -


Especially during the last decades of her life, Ruth Schloss portrayed people in nursing homes and hospitals. People who seem to go unobserved are captured from their everyday lives. The artist succeeds, with a brush that is as virtuoso as it is concise, in illustrating people in their unique individuality, each marked by life in their own way. Through the images, one feels the authentic richness of often painful biographies. Here we see an old woman sitting at a table, who forms a closed form with her overlapping hands. With a slight smile, she looks inward, the smile thwarted by her shadowy face.




About the artist


Ruth Schloss's father was a social democratic papermaker; her mother had run a liberal kindergarten. In 1937, the Jewish family emigrated to Israel and settled in Kfar Shmaryahu, a village founded by German immigrants near Tel Aviv, where they ran a model farm. Until 1942, Schloss studied at the New Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem with Mordecai Ardon, who had trained at the Bauhaus in Dessau. From 1946, she took painting classes at Kibbutz Haartzi. In 1947, she participated in her first group exhibition in Tel Aviv. From 1949 to 1951, Schloss continued her studies in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In Paris, she was particularly inspired by the works of Bernard Buffet. In 1962, she opened a studio in Jaffa, which she ran until 1983, where she also gave painting classes to mothers and children. She exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In 1991, the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art hosted the first retrospective of her work. In addition to painting, Ruth Schloss has also been illustrating books and newspapers since 1939. Due to her socially engaged and committed art, she is considered the "Käthe Kollwitz of Israel."