Widely acclaimed modernist sculptor Ruth Duckworth created abstract ceramic forms for pieces breathtakingly large and charmingly small in her studio on the first floor of a renovated North Side pickle plant.
Ms. Duckworth, 90, died after a brief illness Sunday, Oct. 18, at Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care in Chicago, said her agent, Thea Burger.
A Chicagoan since 1964 via Germany and England, Ms. Duckworth created work that resides in the collections of major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago.
Many of her large-scale murals and sculptures grace lobbies, airport terminals and other public spaces. Shortly after coming to the U.S. to teach at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, she created a 400-square-foot stoneware mural that forms the entryway of the school’s Geophysical Sciences building.
“It’s like walking inside of her mind,” said Michael Dunbar, a sculptor and friend of Ms. Duckworth’s who is Art in Architecture coordinator for the State of Illinois.
In the 1970s, she received a commission for “Clouds Over Lake Michigan,” which was first in a bank and later the lobby of the Chicago Board of Trade building, a sweeping piece of relief that incorporates meteorological and geological themes.
“That was really a breakthrough piece for her. She really found her voice and form in that piece,” Dunbar said.
Ms. Duckworth lived on the second floor of the Lakeview neighborhood pickle factory she renovated in the early 1980s. A large opening in the floor allowed her to look down from her home to see her murals in progress and envision how they would look on a wall. She fired her work in two large kilns.
“I have terrible gas bills,” she told the Tribune in 1984.
Born Ruth Windmuller in Hamburg, Germany, Ms. Duckworth left with her family for England in 1936 — her father was Jewish — and she studied at art schools in Liverpool and London. Her 1949 marriage to Aidron Duckworth ended in divorce.
She started out working in stone, metal and wood. When she took up clay and ceramics, she approached the medium as a sculptor rather than with the traditional methods of a potter. Her abstract pieces put her at odds with the prevailing aesthetic of the day, the more utilitarian approach of fellow Brit Bernard Leach.
After coming to Chicago as a ceramic teacher at the University of Chicago, where she remained for 13 years, she worked out of a studio in the Pilsen neighborhood.
In the U.S., she found more acceptance for her big abstract pieces, and for that reason stayed in Chicago. She was never much of a self-promoter, but a turning point came when gallery owner Alice Westphal began showing her works at Exhibit A in Evanston around 1980, Burger said.
In addition to her large public works, she created smaller pieces in unglazed, white porcelain that included a cup and blade series and tabletop figures.
She put in long hours every day in the large studio at the converted pickle plant, and when not busy there would busy herself tending a lush backyard garden or caring for her dogs. Her social life centered on a tight-knit circle of local artists, but she wasn’t one to go on about art theory.
“She was very intuitive in her work,” Dunbar said. “She did not really talk about concepts and theories as much as create new shapes and forms.”
Amid a 2005 career retrospective of her work that had showings in New York and at the Chicago Cultural Center, Ms. Duckworth told the Tribune that when she made something, “I try not to think. I try to just let it happen.”
Ms. Duckworth continued to create art until falling ill about six weeks ago.
“Her work was so distinctive,” Dunbar said. “When you saw a Ruth Duckworth, you knew it was a Ruth Duckworth. Instantly recognizable.”
Ms. Duckworth is survived by a sister, Ilse Windmuller.
A memorial service is being planned for early December in Chicago.
———–
ttjensen@tribune.com
