Ruth Gikow (1915-1982), 'Flood', color serigraph, c. 1939, edition c. 25. Signed and titled in pencil. Annotated with the WPA number 'G-9100' in pencil, lower left sheet corner. A fine impression with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; full margins (2 3/8 to 3 1/4 inches). An archivally repaired tear (1/2 inch) in the top center sheet edge, well away from the image; a spot stain in the bottom center margin, and in the top left margin, both well away from the image; otherwise in good condition. Scarce.
Created for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, New York City, with the WPA inventory number in the bottom left sheet corner, in pencil.
Collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York Public Library.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ruth Gikow was born in the Russian Ukraine and emigrated to the Lower East Side of New York when she was 5. At age 17, she entered the Cooper Union Art School and studied with Austin Purvis, Jr. and John Stewart Curry. Following art school, she joined the New York City WPA Federal Arts Project. In 1939, she was commissioned to paint murals for Bronx Hospital, Riker's Island, Rockefeller Center and, the New York World's Fair. She also created illustrations for World Publishers' edition of Dostoevski's 'Crime and Punishment'. With fellow artists, she helped found the American Serigraph Society which produced a substantial body of original graphics employing the silkscreen medium.
Following World War II, after a brief career in commercial art, she met and married artist Jack Levine. Challenged by his commitment to his work, she returned to her painting and drawing with renewed energy. Her interest in figurative representation was reinvigorated when she and her husband travelled to Europe to study the works of the Old Masters, the wall paintings of Pompeii and the Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna.
Though she lived through turbulent and sometimes hostile times, Gikow's work continued to reflect her strong love of humanity. Her lifelong dedication to an original and authentic vision led art critic Henry Russell Hitchcock to describe her as one of the country's "ten outstanding women painters."
Gikow's work is represented in numerous public collections including, the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Portland Museum of Art (Maine), National Institute of Arts and Letters, Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA, Hartford Art Foundation, and the Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, OH. |
