About: Ruth Schloss
Ruth Schloss was born in the city of Nuremberg in Germany in 1922 to a family of affluent merchants. After the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, her family immigrated to Israel in 1937 and settled in Kfar Shmaryahu. Schloss studied graphic design at the Bezalel Academy of Art between the years 1938-1941. In this period in Jerusalem she was a part of the "Hashomer Hatzair" youth movement, there her socialist ideology developed. In 1946 schloss participated in a painting course for Kibbutz Artzi artists with Yochanan Simon and Marcel Janco. The artist continued her art studies in 1949 at the Grande Chaumiere, Paris.
Schloss had shown great empathy to social issues and had described them extensively in her artworks. Her art is characterized by expressive compositions. Her social involvement was reflected in her art and through her art one can understand her point of view. Schloss is considered by critics to have been a protest artist, devoted to her political belief. The artist did not belong to the "Ofakim Hadashim" art group who represented Israeli abstraction in art and who strongly opposed the ideas and style of the protest painters. It was important to the artist to convey a social message through her art and she did so all through her artistic career.
The social realism group created art in parallel to the "Ofakim Hadashim" Movement that avoided painting with a social message in art and preferred abstract and personal paintings instead of social realism.
Ruth Schloss belonged to the Protesting Artists group, artists who reflected social criticism in their artworks, they presented a distorted and unjust reality. Schloss's art described social injustice. She described the people in the disadvantaged side of society, for example workers, protests and especially women and mothers. The mother figure was presented as a symbol of silent protest against the injustices of war.
Schloss has a realistic painting style that usually describes the oppressed and weakened side of society. She painted to portray the unjust side of society, the dark side of humanity. The individual and the society are always at the center of her artwork. Schloss often painted children, the elderly, women, refugees and animals with expressive expression.
Schloss won the Silver Medal award from the International exhibition in Leipzig, Germany (1965). In addition, she received the Artist-in-Residence prize from The Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (1997).
