Ruth Root (born 1967 in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, USA) is an American artist based in New York.

Education

Root graduated from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

Rhode Island Rhode Island ( ) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Is ...

, in 1990, and completed her MFA at

the Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatoria ...

in 1993. She attended a residency at the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 ...

in 1994.

Work

Her work includes paintings on canvas, paintings on thin, irregularly shaped pieces of aluminium and small painted paper pieces. Root has participated in a number of exhibitions including ''Abstract Redux'' at the

Danese Gallery Danese may refer to: * Danese, West Virginia * Danese Cattaneo (1509–1572), Italian sculptor and medallist * Danese Cooper (born 1959), American programmer and computer scientist and advocate of open source software * Fabrizio Danese (born 199 ...

in New York, ''Kosmobiologie'' at the Bellwether Gallery in Brooklyn, and ''Son-of-a-Guston'' at Clementine Gallery in New York. She has exhibited internationally at galleries such as Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska in Austria, Galeria Marta Cervera in Spain,

Seattle Art Museum The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. The museum operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in ...

, and Galleria Franco Noero, in Torino, Italy. The artist's paintings are primarily hard-edge abstractions, consisting of rectangles and other simple shapes in a limited brightly colored palate. In paintings from the early 2000s, eyes or a cigarette was added to these otherwise abstract canvases. ''Untitled'' from 2005, in the collection of the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. It has one of the largest single co ...

, is an example of this phase of Root's oeuvre. A pair of eyes mysteriously peer out from a dark blue expanse. The

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

, the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, the

, and the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

walkerart.org
/ref> are among the public collections holding work by Ruth Root. She is represented by the

Andrew Kreps Gallery Andrew is the English form of the given name, common in many countries. The word is derived from the , ''Andreas'', itself related to ''aner/andros'', "man" (as opposed to "woman"), thus meaning "manly" and, as consequence, "brave", "strong", "c ...

in New York,

Maureen Paley Maureen Paley (born 1953Sleeman, Elizabeth (ed.) ''The International Who's Who of Women'' (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 431. Entry on Paley available as snippet viehere/ref>) is the American owner of a contemporary art gallery in Be ...

in London and Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska in Salzburg.

Awards

*1996 National Endowment for the Arts, Mid-Atlantic Grant in Painting *1996 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting

References

External links

*Frances Richard,
Ruth Root - New York - hard-edge abstraction
', ''ArtForum'', September 2003. *Mario Naves,
A Headstrong Loner's Paradox: Transformations Fixed in Time
', ''The New York Observer'', May 18, 2003. {{DEFAULTSORT:Root, Ruth School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Brown University alumni Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni 20th-century American painters 21st-century American painters Living people 1967 births 20th-century American women painters 21st-century American women painters