Ruth Eckstein, a prize winning painter and printmaker, has received national and international recognition as an abstract modernist painter and master printmaker. Listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Art, Who’s Who in the East, Who’s Who of Women, Who’s Who in the World, and the Dictionary of International Biography, she has won acclaim in numerous publications, such as The New York Times, the New York Arts Journal, Newsday, Artspeak, Journal of the Print World, Art News, Arts Magazine, and Prizewinning Graphics Book II (1964), Printworld International 9th ed. (2000).

Ruth Eckstein was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1916, and moved to Paris with her future husband in 1934. They came to America in 1939. Eckstein continued her painting studies, taking classes at the Museum of Modern Art, and with Stuart Davis at The New School for Social Research. With the encouragement of Harry Sternberg, her teacher at the Long Island North Shore Community Art Center, Ms. Eckstein enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, where she immersed herself in printmaking techniques as well as painting and drawing, studying with Sternberg, Julian Levi and V. Vytlacil. Later, intrigued by the woodcut technique of printmaker Seong Moy, Eckstein studied with him at the Pratt Graphic Art Center, also studying etching techniques with Roberto DeLamonica.

Her work evolved through her printmaking and related painting and collage, to achieve a majestic tranquility, through pared down compositions and subtle modulations of color and shape. Her work embodies an almost oriental serenity of space. In many works, landscape is suggested by simple abstractions of form and gentle color harmonies; in others, tilted geometric designs, with clear bold colors, provoke a tension between balance and motion. “Her manipulation of space, creating an illusion of depth by layering flat planes of color and texture, is especially pronounced in her prints and collages. It is in these media that she learned to develop edges that not only soften the geometry of her forms, but also – through the simple expediency of tearing instead of cutting the edge of a piece of paper – introduce an organic quality into her compositions and enhance the development of space.”

“From the early 1960’s, into the early 1980’s, she and her family traveled widely in South and Central America, the American Southwest, the Far East and Europe. Her work is broadened by these travels, the taste of which lingers not only in subject and form, but also in titles.” (J.M.Welker: Ruth Eckstein, “The Way,” 48 p. monograph, illustrated).

Ms. Eckstein’s work is represented in over fifty prestigious public collections, including the Biblioteca, Galleria D’Arte Moderne, in Rome, Italy; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France; the Boston Public Library, the British Museum, London, England, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., New York Public Library, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT., and the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Her artwork is in more than ninety major corporate collections worldwide, including AT&T, Bank of Tokyo, Dresden Bank, Exxon-Mobil, Freeport McMoran, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., Rockefeller Center Corp., L..F. Rothschild & Co., Saks Fifth Avenue, Singer Co., Smith Barney, and Unisys.

Ruth Eckstein received many awards for her work, including three awards given by Audubon Artists, New York, and the Fairfield Award, presented by the Silvermine Guild, CT.