Ruth Faerber

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Ruth Faerber
Born
Ruth Levy

(1922-10-09)9 October 1922
Woollahra, New South Wales, Australia
Died27 November 2024(2024-11-27) (aged 102)
NationalityAustralian
Education Sydney Girls High School, Ravenswood School for Girls
East Sydney Technical College
Known for Printmaking

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. [1] [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Ruth Levy was born in Woollahra, New South Wales on 9 October 1922. [3] [4] She attended Ravenswood School for Girls where her art teacher Gladys Gibbons introduced her to printmaking. [3] She then enrolled in a commercial art school, [3] [5] before studying painting at East Sydney Technical College [3] [6] and, from 1944, at the studio of the Hungarian immigrant painter and printmaker Desiderius Orban. [3] [5]

In 1946, she married Hans Faerber, [7] a design engineer, with whom she had two children. [3] It was not until the 1960s that Faerber was able to return to art professionally. [8] In 1963, she attended classes in lithography at the Workshop Arts Centre in Willoughby, in the lower north shore of Sydney. [8]

Career

By 1967, both the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney [5] and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne [9] had purchased prints by Faerber. [3] In 1967, she received a scholarship to study at the Pratt Center for Contemporary Printmaking in New York. [6] [8] [10] In 1970, Faerber was elected to the committee of the Contemporary Art Society (Australia). [11] She was an art critic for The Australian Jewish Times for ten years, from 1969. [12] [13] Between 1964 and 1995, she held 31 solo exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, London and Japan. [1] She was artist-in-residence at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 1987, [1] [13] and received an Australia-Japan Foundation travel grant to attend the Kyoto Paper Convention in 1983. [1]

Faerber experimented with the mediums for her printmaking, [1] [2] including the use of silver foil as the surface for lithography in 1979. [14] In 1980, she studied papermaking at the Jabberwock Papermill in Hobart, [2] [3] [8] and began to use handmade paper as a medium. [15] 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." [2] 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." [1]

Awards

Collections

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Grishin, Sasha (1997). Australian Printmaking in the 1990s. Artist Printmakers: 1990-1995. Sydney, Australia: Craftsman House. pp. 8, 78–79. ISBN   9057033917.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Borlase, Nancy (25 October 1980). "The Week in Art: Leda goes Australian". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 19. Retrieved 23 December 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mendelssohn, Joanna (30 November 2024). "Australian printmaker Ruth Faerber has died aged 102. She never stopped making art". The Conversation. Retrieved 2 December 2024.
  4. ↑ Broinowski, Alison (2003). "'Regionalists' & 'Travellers'". In Zimmer, Jenny (ed.). The Crossley Gallery, 1966-1980. Macmillan Art Publishing. p. 101. Retrieved 23 December 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Ruth Faerber". Art Gallery NSW. Retrieved 2 December 2024.
  6. 1 2 3 Kempf, Franz (1976). Contemporary Australian printmakers. Melbourne, Australia: Lansdowne Edition, Paul Hamlyn Pty Ltd. pp. 52–53. ISBN   0701804696.
  7. ↑ "Approaching Marriage". The Hebrew Standard of Australasia. 18 July 1946. p. 4. Retrieved 23 December 2024.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Grishin, Sasha (1994). Contemporary Australian Printmaking. An Interpretative History. Craftsman House. pp. 126, 130–131. ISBN   9768097760.
  9. 1 2 "Ruth Faerber". NGV. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  10. 1 2 3 Germaine, Max (1991). A Dictionary of Women Artists of Australia. Craftsman House. p. 137. ISBN   9768097132.
  11. ↑ "Honour for Ruth Faerber". The Australian Jewish Times. 23 July 1970. p. 4. Retrieved 23 December 2024.
  12. ↑ "Introducing our new art critic". The Australian Jewish Times. 29 May 1969. p. 13. Retrieved 31 January 2025.
  13. 1 2 "Artist opens Moriah display". The Australian Jewish Times. 15 July 1988. p. 9. Retrieved 31 January 2025.
  14. ↑ Eagle, Mary (14 June 1979). "Journey through a brave new world". The Age. Melbourne, Australia. p. 2. Retrieved 23 December 2024.
  15. ↑ Berriman, Ann (1995). "Enduring metaphors. -The work of Ruth Faerber". Craft Arts International. 33: 35–43.
  16. ↑ Wood, Lilian, ed. (1982). Directory of Australia printmakers 1982. Melbourne, Australia: Print Council of Australia. ISBN   0909227063.
  17. ↑ "Ruth Faerber". NGA. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  18. ↑ "Ruth Faerber. Woman of Pompeii I". Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Retrieved 30 January 2025.
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