Ruth Schloss (1922-2013), A Waiting Worker, 1956.
Oil on canvas. Signed and dated.
54X81 cm.

Ruth Schloss (1922-2013) was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and immigrated to Palestine with her family in 1935. When she was only sixteen, she began her studies at Bezalel, and then joined the founding group of Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan. Schloss devoted her talents to the art and printing enterprises of the Kibbutz Movement, working as an illustrator for the newspaper "Mishmar LiYeladim" and as a book cover designer for "Sifriyat Poalim." From ca. 1950 to 1952, she studied art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. After returning to Israel, due to the rift in the Kibbutz Movement, she left her kibbutz.
Schloss was a member of the Communist Party, and her paintings, in the style of Social Realism, often conveyed a socialist message, exposing social gaps and the ramifications of class distinctions. Her works focused on the weaker members of society – downtrodden women, hungry children, workers, and residents of transit camps. Later, she turned her attention to the lives of women, to the helplessness of the birth experience, and to the decline of old age, all of which she painted from the perspective – and with the sensitivity – of a woman viewing human beings as rooted in their surroundings. In the words of the poet Nathan Zach: "Her motto remained the same over the years. Life itself. Without embellishment."
The present work was presented at the exhibition at the Haifa Museum of Art titled "Social Realism in the 50's, Political Art in the 90's" (1998). In the exhibition catalogue, the curator Gila Ballas write as follows: "Many of her paintings of the 1950s were labourers. 'A waiting worker… is the most important of her works in this area. Withdrawn, preoccupied with worries, he hunched on the curb waiting for casual employment to come his way. The strong realistic design, the emphatic, three-dimensional form, the dark mass on a background of bright greys, give this oil-painting a quality that recalls certain paintings by Cezanne."
Reference: Gila Ballas, Ilana Tenenbaum, and Yael Lotan (curators and eds.), "Social Realism in the 50's, Political Art in the 90's, " exhibition catalogue, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, 1998, Hebrew and English (p. 156; p. 89, no. 8).

Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.