Ruth Root (born 1967 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

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

Education

Root graduated from Brown University,

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but i ...

, in 1990, and completed her MFA at

the Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and list of largest art museums, largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visit ...

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 t ...

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 in New York, ''Kosmobiologie'' at the

Bellwether Gallery Bellwether Gallery was a New York City art gallery based in Chelsea. Director and owner Becky Smith was recognized as an important promoter of emerging artists since the gallery's 1999 opening in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn.Genocchio ...

in Brooklyn, and ''Son-of-a-Guston'' at

Clementine Gallery A clementine (''Citrus × clementina'') is a tangor, a citrus fruit hybrid between a willowleaf mandarin orange ( ''C.'' × ''deliciosa'') and a sweet orange (''C. × sinensis''), named in honor of Clément Rodier, a French missionary who firs ...

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, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on C ...

, 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. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum 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., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desi ...

, 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 196 ...

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. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...

, the

, and the

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

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

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 American women painters 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists