RUTH BLOCH

Comfortable Grace Couple on Bench 2 Flirtation Dancing by the Light of the Moon Couple on Bench Dancing Steps Lady moon Couple in Wreath 2 Still Life Lily Coffee Table Sitting Violinist Flight with a Red Balloon Affinity What a Happy Journey Love (for books too) Good Talk The Flower is for You Secret of Love Love on the Rock

RUTH BLOCH
Israeli

Ruth Bloch was born in Israel in 1951. Her father, a musician and her mother, an artist, both escaped the Holocaust in Europe. Ruth grew up in a kibbutz where the community cared for the children and everyone worked to survive and build the very young nation. She lost her mother giving birth to her brother when Ruth was only nine years old.

Reaching adulthood Ruth attended the Avny Art Institute in Tel Aviv as an avid painter. When she showed her professors what she had already accomplished as a sculptor they encouraged her not to take courses from them. They, and she, felt that Ruth had already developed her own style and that she should go her own way.

As Bloch began raising her own children she left the kibbutz and moved to the desert. This seclusion offered Ruth the time she needed to develop her sculpture, before moving to Tel Aviv for two years for medical reasons.

Ruth is very philosophical about this period and describes it as a blessing. Back in the city she was discovered by galleries and museums and her reputation as a major talent was born. For the last ten years that talent and immense hard work has taken her and her sculptures to nearly every point around the world. While she belongs to The International Women's Political Caucus and believes strongly in women's rights she has never felt discriminated against. The artist is aware that she is often the only woman artist in a particular exhibition and is always the only female sculptor.

"I never considered myself a minority because I feel I can do anything. This never stopped me. I never felt less fortunate. People notice that I accomplish. Most sculptors are men. When I'm in the foundry, I give the orders. I tell them what to do and they do it and we work very well together even though they are all men."

Having accomplished many intimate and large-scale works in bronze ("I like big works, even though I'm so small") using the traditional lost wax method, Ruth has now turned her attention to a combining, a synthesis of bronze and glass. In this process Bloch does two surprising and unusual things: she casts unique, one of a kind works, from a mold and she does each step herself. When a sculptor creates a mold it is traditionally to cast an edition and when a sculptor becomes as successful as Ruth Bloch, it is customary to oversee or even be absent when the artisans work is done. From the clay of the figures and the carving directly in wax of the tree branches to the blowtorch utilized to create the patinas; it is all Ruth Bloch.

"I have to be in the foundry all the time. I weld the trees myself. I do everything at each stage. I create the mold for the glass, different from one another. I use colors that belong to the glass world and to the ceramic world. It's always an adventure. I now have a new glass and I go to create a new bronze for that unique glass. I challenge myself. I dream the trees during the night. When I look out at nature I don't see nature anymore. I see my trees with the glass, the colors, the coolness - I grow with each piece."

Bloch's growth is far easier to trace than her influences. Sculpture itself has laconically lagged behind all other post war media. Ruth has had little interest in either the literal sculpture as afforded by Duane Hanson or a return to omanticism championed by Frederick Hart. Although Bloch desires to stay as close as possible to her feelings she does not confuse emotionalism with naive technique, as did Bernard Meadows or Kenneth Armitage. As a figurative sculptor, Bloch most closely relates to Henry Moore for his fluidity of line and his genius for making the massive delicate. Bloch's Fatherhood sculpture, which blends the human forms in an eternal circle, echoes Moore's ability to realize the full potential of the sculptural form. In its scale and weight Bloch's Family is reminiscent of Moore's Northhampton Madonna (1943/4). However, Bloch moves one step beyond Moore by allowing no separation between man, woman and child. For Bloch these figures are one; locked in an unending circle of life. Bloch also acknowledges Alberto Giacometti's influence. Bloch's stylized elongated figures and her highly textured patinas mark a direct path to the master Giacometti.