Learn about Dorothy Rutka.
Rutka, Dorothy--1933 May Show (May, 1933) by Cleveland Museum of Art and Dorothy RutkaCleveland Public Library
Rutka's Training and Early Work
Dorothy Rutka was born in Grand Rivers, Michigan, She came to Ohio to the Cleveland School of Art, graduating in 1929. She frequently showed pieces at the Museum of Art's May Show. In 1936 she was part of the Cleveland graphic arts project of the WPA.
See how Dorothy Rutka's work shows various groups of people gathering, speaking, and planning and consider the relationship between technique and vision.
Department Store (ca. 1935-1939) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
Intaglio Technique
The lines of this intaglio print are dashing. But for a few deep cuts and crosshatching, the image seems much like an ink drawing that might have been done spontaneously.
Shopping in a Department Store
Note the lines in the representation of the fashionable women in the store. Excepting a few surfaces, clothes, hair, faces, and form are shown with long but minimal strokes. The shoppers move dynamically, and two women in the foreground immediately engage with one another.
Under Bridges (1934/1940) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
Men on the Street
Though akin to the image of the women shopping in it's spare use of lines, this intaglio print renders the figures using straighter, choppier lines. Lunch boxes out and tools at rest, men listen to the figure in the foreground with his back to us, while looking away from him.
Faces
The clothing and faces of the men are rendered more simply than the women in the previous print, whose hair and faces had contoured surfaces and complex hair. The angular combination on this face of pipe, cheekbones, and knitted brow conveys a lean and even angry impression.
Strike Talk (ca. 1935-1939) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
Talking About a Strike
Rutka uses an offset soft ground technique in Strike Talk. The initial drawing, made with a dark crayon on a detached ground, can be transferred directly to a plate, producing an exact replica without the intervention of a copyist.
Figures and Background
The ability of the technique to capture shades of gray is used by Rutka to highlight the somber mood of the figures. Deep grays in the foreground contrast with the blurry wash of the background. The grays highlight the conferring figures and also give them a brooding aspect.
Regarding the suffering of others during the Great Depression, Rutka often drew straight from life, showing her community's hardships in prints depicting displacement and poverty.
Striker's Wife (ca. 1935-1939) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
The Toll of Economic Strife
Here Rutka seeks to show the effect that a strike has on a worker's family and community. Both mother and child in the image are thin, representing the hunger, poverty, and isolation of families caught up in labor strife.
Anxious Hands
The wizened, worried, weary hands of the central figure combined with the hollow eyes and prominent cheekbones demonstrate effectively how to convey mood through the use ranges of gray in offset soft ground printing.
Eviction (ca. 1935-1939) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
Homelessness
Another use of offset soft ground printing to convey a tragic mood is Rutka's Eviction which shows a family on the sidewalk with their possessions after being removed from their home.
Poverty (ca. 1935-1939) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
Being a Guest
Rutka's Poverty puts the viewer inside a home. The gaunt woman in the foreground stares blankly while sitting on a small chair. A bent woman at the stove pours from a coffee pot into cups on a little table. To see the image is to sit down with the group as an uncomfortable guest.
Learn about how Dorothea Rutka showed drought and dark landscapes from the 1930s.
Siesta (ca. 1935-1939) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
Gray Landscapes
The print interprets the landscape, and the medium conjures a dark representation of the countryside. 1930 and 1934 were two of the driest years on record in Ohio, and climate realities may have contributed to the representation in the image.
Dead Trees (ca. 1935-1939) by Rutka, DorothyCleveland Public Library
Dark Trees
As with the previous print, this picture depicts a landscape filled with broken fences and dead trees. The energetic angular lines of the print contrast with the grays, and there is a jarring sense of disjunction in the tension between edgy trapezoids and faded countryside.
Ellen Landau, in her 1983 Artists for Victory exhibit catalog, reflected Rutka's attitude towards social realism. Landau writes that "a writer for the Cleveland News commented, in 1938, that many people objected that [her] work was 'not very pretty' and even termed it 'propaganda,' to which [Rutka] replied that her goal was 'to show people as they are.' (Artists for Victory, p. 57)
After the WPA, Rutka lived for the most of her adult life in and around Cleveland. As an artist and activist she contributed greatly to the city's cultural life over the years. Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and many more. Click through the the Cleveland Public Library's Digital Gallery for more art by Dorothy Rutka.
