Ruth Weisberg Exhibition at Skirball Center in LA

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This retrospective features three decades of painting and printmaking by celebrated Los Angeles artist Ruth Weisberg, dean of the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. In its first complete showing in twenty years, the ninety-four-foot-long masterwork, The Scroll, synthesizes universal life-cycle events with Weisberg’s experiences as an American Jewish woman, all portrayed in conjunction with scriptural motifs, Jewish history, and rabbinic legend. In addition to The Scroll, more than thirty paintings, drawings, and prints from throughout Weisberg’s career will be on view.

I make art out of all aspects of my identity, finding in the process that art integrates my experiences, beliefs and heritage. I am particularly nourished by the history of art, the history of the Jewish people, and by the unwritten history of women. I believe that art creates meaning and can be transformative for both the artist and their audience. I seek to create realms of the imagination in which the viewer can also project their struggles, stories, and desires.

The visual qualities of my work are often affected by the lens of memory; - by the sense of the passage of time and the act of remembering. Various media appeal to me for their distinctive strategies and associations but especially for their visual qualities. For example, lithography for its liquidity, monotypes for their luminosity, and mixed media painting for the tactility of its surface. I find drawing to be the underpinning of everything I do. As a medium, I have treated drawing as both an intimate and monumental form. Since 1974, I have created installations which invite the viewer to enter an architecturally defined space. My interest in the spatial organization of narrative with its potential for interactivity culminated in the large scale works, “The Scroll,” 1987-88, and “Sisters and Brothers,” 1994.

The Sisters’ Reconciliation
(from Sisters and Brothers)
Mixed media installation, 13×18′
© Ruth Weisberg, 1994

Biography

Ruth Weisberg is an artist who works primarily in painting, drawing, and printmaking. She is the Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, and she previously served as Chair of the Studio Arts Department 1986-87 as well as Acting Associate Dean for the School of Architecture and Fine Arts for two years. She received her bachelor and master degrees from the University of Michigan, as well as a Laurea in Painting and Printmaking from the Academia di Belle Arti, Perugia, Italy. After a year at the S. W. Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris, she taught at Eastern Michigan University.

Recent honors include visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in 1995, 1994, and 1992; National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar 1994; a Senior Research Fulbright for Italy in 1992; School of Art, University of Michigan Distinguished Alumni/AE Award for 1992; the Distinguished Artist of the Year Award, Fresno Art Museum, 1990. Weisberg was also President of the College Art Association in 1990-92.

As an artist, Weisberg has been a particularly active exhibitor with over sixty solo and 150 group exhibitions. Weisberg’s work is included in 50 major museum and university collections, including: the Bibliotheque Nationale of France, Paris; Instituto Nationale per la Grafica, Rome, Italy; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Weisberg has two children, Alicia Weisberg-Roberts and Alfred Weisberg-Roberts, and lives with her husband Kelyn Roberts in Santa Monica, California.

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