Ruth Faerber (1922-2024) was an Australian printmaker and art critic, known for her use of three-dimensional, mixed media prints using handmade paper, which expanded the boundaries of printmaking in Australia.

Early life and education

Ruth Levy was born in

Woollahra, New South Wales Woollahra ( ) is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is located east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra. Woollahr ...

on 9 October 1922. She attended

Ravenswood School for Girls Ravenswood School for Girls (often referred to as Ravenswood or Ravo) is an independent, Uniting Church, day school, day and boarding school for Prep to Year 12 girls, situated in Gordon, New South Wales, Gordon, an North Shore (Sydney), Upper N ...

where her art teacher Gladys Gibbons introduced her to printmaking. She then enrolled in a commercial art school, before studying painting at

East Sydney Technical College The National Art School (NAS) is a tertiary level art school, located in , an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The school is an independent accredited higher education provider offering specialised study in studio arts p ...

and, from 1944, at the studio of the Hungarian immigrant painter and printmaker

Desiderius Orban Desiderius Orban, (; 26 November 18844 October 1986) was a renowned Hungary, Hungarian Painting, painter, printmaker and teacher, who, after emigrating to Australia in 1939 when in his mid-50s, also made an illustrious career in that country. ...

. In 1946, she married Hans Faerber, a design engineer, with whom she had two children. It was not until the 1960s that Faerber was able to return to art professionally. In 1963, she attended classes in lithography at the Workshop Arts Centre in Willoughby, in the lower north shore of Sydney.

Career

By 1967, both the

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most import ...

in Sydney and the

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and list of most visited art museums in the world, most visited art mu ...

in Melbourne had purchased prints by Faerber. In 1967, she received a scholarship to study at the Pratt Center for Contemporary Printmaking in New York. In 1970, Faerber was elected to the committee of the

Contemporary Art Society (Australia) The Contemporary Art Society is an Australian organisation formed in Victoria in 1938 to promote non-representative forms of art. Separate, autonomous branches were formed in each state of the Commonwealth by 1966, although not all of them sti ...

. She was an art critic for

The Australian Jewish Times ''The Australian Jewish News'' (''AJN'') is a newspaper published in Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Since 2019, it has been a local partner of ''The Times of Israel''. History The ''AJN'' is descended from ''The Hebrew Stan ...

for ten years, from 1969. Between 1964 and 1995, she held 31 solo exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, London and Japan. She was artist-in-residence at the

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design () is a public college of design and art located in Jerusalem. Established in 1906 by Jewish painter and sculptor Boris Schatz, Bezalel is Israel's oldest institution of higher education and is considered the ...

in 1987, and received an Australia-Japan Foundation travel grant to attend the Kyoto Paper Convention in 1983. Faerber experimented with the mediums for her printmaking, including the use of silver foil as the surface for lithography in 1979. In 1980, she studied papermaking at the Jabberwock Papermill in Hobart, and began to use handmade paper as a medium. Artist and art critic Nancy Borlase wrote later that year, "Using a process of pressing, moulding, casting, couching and laminating, Faerber has produced a series of beautifully evocative, landscape-based, mixed-media works that lift printmaking into the sphere of individual bas reliefs." Sasha Grishin wrote that "Faerber's editioned relief prints, made of cast handmade paper, appear as elements from cultural archaeology, like ancient stones which contain, embedded within them, traces of human existence. ... her three-dimensional prints challenge ideas concerning the narrow prescriptive boundaries of printmaking and point to a path which subsequently has been fruitfully explored by a number of other Australian printmakers."

Awards

* 1980 - Pring Prize,

Collections

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra *

, Melbourne *

, Sydney * Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery,

Launceston, Tasmania Launceston () is a city in the north of Tasmania, Australia, at the confluence of the North Esk River, North Esk and South Esk River, South Esk rivers where they become the Tamar River, Tasmania, Tamar River (kanamaluka). As of 2021, the Launc ...

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) is a museum located in Hobart, Tasmania. The museum was established in 1846, by the Royal Society of Tasmania, the oldest Royal Society outside England. The TMAG receives 400,000 visitors annually. ...

Christchurch Art Gallery The Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, commonly known as the Christchurch Art Gallery, is the public art gallery of the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. It has its own substantial art collection and also presents a programme of New ...

, New Zealand * Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren, Germany

References

External links

Ruth Faerber interviewed by Gay Richardson
at the National Library of Australia {{DEFAULTSORT:Faerber, Ruth 1922 births 2024 deaths Australian women printmakers 20th-century Australian women artists Jewish centenarians National Art School alumni Artists from Sydney Australian women art critics Australian art critics