Ruth Eckstein: Collaged Elements

Abstract modernist Ruth Eckstein was renowned as a master of both painting and printmaking, and frequently pushed the boundaries of both through the incorporation of collaged elements: additions of paper cutouts, wooden pieces, rope strands, and other design embellishments. Ruth Eckstein: Collaged Elements considers these mixed media works throughout the many decades of Eckstein's career, highlighting the artist's adept hand at interweaving layers, texture, and color into deceptively minimalist artworks. 

Of her work, Eckstein explained: "I do not like being confined to a single medium. I like the excitement that comes from switching modes. I like to 'walk' around an idea, deal with it in various ways." Eckstein thus enjoyed freely moving between various media and techniques, yet often threaded ideas together into series which stretched across painting, collagraphy, etching, and screen printing. Though Eckstein created prolifically within each of these media, her finished works were very rarely easily defined as one or the other. Rather, they were amalgamations of artistic techniques, connected through themes, and ornamented with the addition of collage. 

Born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1916, Eckstein took an early interest in art after working in her father's fabric shop as a teenager. In 1934, she fled the Nazi regime for Paris, where she would live for next five years before finally emigrating to New York City in 1939. There, she found asylum within a burgeoning network of émigré artists living in political exile.  Eckstein took painting classes at the Museum of Modern Art and studied under Stuart Davis at The New School for Social Research. With the encouragement of Harry Sternberg, her teacher at the Long Island North Shore Community Art Center, Eckstein enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, where she immersed herself in printmaking techniques as well as painting and drawing, studying with Sternberg, Julian Levi, and Vaclav Vytlacil. Later, intrigued by the woodcut method of printmaker Seong Moy, Eckstein studied with him at the Pratt Graphic Art Center, and also learned etching techniques with master printer Roberto De Lamonica. 

Collaged Elements sees Eckstein's utilization of these various techniques and explores her evolution into mixing media to produce artwork that is bold in its presumed simplicity. Eckstein favored stark color combinations and pared-down compositions to achieve a tranquility of space that belies the labor inherent in each work. By layering flat planes of color and texture, Eckstein imbues depth into her paintings and prints, thoughtfully enhancing and developing the sense of space contained within each. 

Eckstein's work is represented in over fifty prestigious public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art; the Guggenheim Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the National Museum of American Art; and the Harvard Art Museums. 

Ruth Eckstein: Collaged Elements celebrates the artist's genre defying works, using collage to craft sculptural paintings and layered prints into compelling arrangements of dimensional abstraction. The exhibition is on view May 24 through July 21 with a reception Sunday afternoon, June 9, 2-4pm.