Ruth Duckworth

Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009) was a British sculptor who was best known for her smooth ceramic works of abstract forms derived from nature. Finding much of her inspiration from Bronze Age Cycladic sculptures, Duckworth’s oeuvre have elongated silhouettes with slight details suggesting the face and limbs. Born Ruth Windmüller in Hamburg, Germany to a Jewish father and Christian mother, she was forced to leave the country in 1936 due to Nazi restrictions on Jewish students, studying instead at the Liverpool College of Art in the United Kingdom. She initially worked as a tombstone engraver in England, and in 1964 moved to the US to teach at the University of Chicago. Her works are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA: and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others. Duckworth died in Chicago, IL, where she had spent the last 45 years of her life.

Ruth Duckworth delivers an extensive, thoughtful monograph on the artist’s entire body of work with new scholarship, exquisite reproductions, and the complete cooperation of the Duckworth Estate.