Ruth Schloss (1922-2013) – Collection of Sketches

Ruth Schloss (1922-2013) – Collection of Sketches
32 sketches by Ruth Schloss (1922-2013).
Watercolor, pen, charcoal, India ink and felt pen on paper.
Most of the sketches are individual or group portraits. Other sketches depict animals, views and workers at work. Two of the sketches are signed "Ruth Schloss" (Hebrew).
Ruth Schloss (1922-2013) was born in Nuremberg and immigrated to Palestine with her family in 1935. When she was only sixteen she started her studies at Bezalel, then joined the group of founders of Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan. Schloss devoted her talents to the art and printing enterprises of the kibbutz movement, working as an illustrator for the "Mishmar Liyeladim" newspaper and as a book cover designer for "Sifriyat Poalim". From ca. 1950 to 1952 she studied art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and after she returned to Israel, due to the rift in the Kibbutz Movement, she left her kibbutz. Schloss was a member of the Communist Party and her paintings, in the style of Social Realism, often conveyed a socialist message of exposing social differences and class distinctions. She painted the weaker members of society – downtrodden women, hungry children, workers and residents of transit camps. Later, she turned to the lives of women, to the helplessness of birth and the decline of old age – all of which she painted with the sensitivity of a woman seeing human-beings rooted in their surroundings, as the poet Nathan Zach wrote of her – "her motto remained the same over the years. Life itself. Without embellishment".
Approx. 20.5X14.5 to 25X35 cm. Good overall condition. Stains. A few tears and small open tears along the edges of some of the leaves. Pieces of paper for reinforcement on verso of one work, at the corners.
Literature:
1. Broader Horizons, 120 Years of Israeli Art, from the Ofrat Collection to the Levin Collection. Selected Works, Part II, by Gideon Ofrat. Jerusalem: Vienna-Jerusalem Foundation for Israeli Art, 2013. Hebrew.
2. Ruth Schloss, Retrospective. Curator: Tali Tamir. Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod website. Hebrew.
Provenance: Gift of the artist.