Ruth grotenrath biography

Ruth Dorothy Grotenrath was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1912. She graduated from Milwaukee State Teachers College in 1933 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, intending to teach art. Grotenrath married fellow Milwaukee artist Schomer Lichtner in 1934, and both found employment with the art programs of the Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935. While Grotenrath worked primarily as an artist, she taught art on and off throughout her life, teaching still life painting part-time at the Layton School of Art in 1945 and design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1961. She also taught alongside Lichtner at The Clearing, a learning retreat in Door County, Wisconsin, for several years. Grotenrath enjoyed a fifty yearlong career. Her work was exhibited at the World's Fairs of New York and San Francisco; the Metropolitan Museum in New York; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Chicago Art Institute; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Virginia Museum; and a variety of other museums. She passed away at the age of 75 in 1988 due to complications from multiple bypass heart surgery.

Frank Schomer Lichtner was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1905. He studied at the Milwaukee State Teachers College, the Chicago Art Institute, the Art Students League of New York, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He married Ruth Grotenrath in 1934. In 1935, both Lichtner and Grotenrath found work with the art programs of the Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA). Lichtner is known for two dominant motifs in his artwork: cows, inspired by the summers spent on the farm, and ballerinas, which came from an interest in ballet. While primarily focused on creating art, Lichtner also occasionally taught drawing and painting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the 1960s, as well as courses at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, the Wustum Museum of Fine Arts in Racine, and the Milwaukee Art Institute. During the 1950s and 1960s, Lichtner and Grotenrath both taught

"The paintings of Ruth Grotenrath (1912-1988) speak more about the woman who created them than any of the most carefully chosen words. They are lively, colorful, warm, cheerful and composed. Ruth found beauty in most everything around her. Throughout her fifty-year career, she tirelessly painted compositions of selected objects culled from her immediate surroundings. The orderliness of her arrangements and bright colors make these works genuinely uplifting. Although her paintings have a charm, and perhaps even an unmistakable femininity, they are never saccharine. They are filled with a sense of careful study and analysis. Viewing a number of her paintings serves as an open window into the private world of a woman with a distinct vision." --- Dean Sobel, former Curator of Contemporary Art, Milwaukee Museum of Art Ruth Grotenrath was married to Schomer Lichtner (1905-2006) in 1934. Ruth began as a classic regionalist and then worked into modernism and abstraction influenced by Japanese art and culture. Many of Ruth's works were of floral still lifes. She was influenced by the styles of Matisse and Van Gogh. In a Milwaukee Journal article of October 30th, 1966, Ruth quotes Pablo Picasso as saying, "The World is a marvelous spectacle…I do not seek, I find." For her own early work she drew upon vital and broad 20th Century modern influences and for later work the sophisticated arts of Japan. Together with her artist husband, Schomer Lichtner, she was part of a generation’s movement away from the influences of the German academies in Wisconsin. Being part of the Social Realist movement of the 1930’s she had studied everyday people and places for her themes, sometimes creating monumental expressions like the mural from the Hudson, Wisconsin Post Office, now exhibited in the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Recipient of the 2007 Wisconsin Visual Artist Lifetime Achievement Award Ruth attended Milwaukee State Teachers College, today known as the University of

(1912, Milwaukee, WI – 1988, Milwaukee, WI)

Ruth Grotenrath was born in Milwaukee in 1912 and attended Riverside High School where she developed her interest in art. By 1933, Grotenrath received her B.A. in Milwaukee State Teachers College, where she studied under Gustave Moeller, Robert von Neumann, and Elsa Ulbricht. The following year, Grotenrath married Schomer Lichtner, a fellow painter. In 1935, she was employed by the WPA (Works Project Administration) Treasury Relief Art Project along with her husband. In 1945, she taught still life painting at the Layton School of Art. Nine years later, Grotenrath turned to printmaking, producing and selling her own silkscreens printed on drapery fabric at the Wisconsin State Fair. In 1961, she taught design at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and The Clearing in Door County.

Grotenrath’s style changed over the course of her artistic career. Her early work is marked with the American Regionalist style, as she was taught by Moeller, von Neumann, and Ulbricht. By the 1940s, she began to work with bright colors and in a stylistic manner influenced by Lichtner. Finally, by the 1950’s, Grotenrath seemed to have found her