Ruth Duckworth
Ruth Duckworth
American, born Germany, 1919–2009
Birth placeHamburg, Germany
Death placeChicago, Illinois, United States
BiographyAmerican, born 1919, Hamburg, Germany; died October 18, 2009, Chicago, IL.Studio: Chicago, IL. Education: Duckworth left Nazi Germany in 1936, spent four years at the Liverpool School of Art and two more years at the Hammersmith School of Art and Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Awards: Masters of the Medium, James Renwick Alliance, Washington, DC, 2001; Honorary Doctorate, Depaul University, Chicago, IL, 1982. Collections: Duckworth's work is in dozens of public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Art: She was exposed to the minimalist aesthetic of Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi whose influences remain in her work today. The friendly triumvirate of Duckworth, Hans Coper and Lucie Rie and their adoption of European modernism challenged the reigning taste of Bernard Leach and an Anglo-Oriental tradition in ceramics. She moved to Chicago and her reputation as an exponent of Organic Abstraction has grown internationally ever since. In 2005, at 85 her retrospective touring exhibition opened at the Museum of Art and Design in New York.
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