Ruth Bloch was born in 1951 in Israel. Her father was a musician and her mother worked in ceramics. Ruth grew up in a kibbutz where the community cared for the children and everyone worked to survive and build the very young nation. She lost her mother giving birth to her brother when Ruth was only nine years old. “She was an artist and left all her tools. I picked them up and I know that sounds symbolic but I felt I had to take care of my brother, my father and the art..”

Reaching adulthood Ruth attended the Avny Art Institute in Tel Aviv as an avid painter. When she showed her professors what she had already accomplished as a sculptor they encouraged her not to take courses from them. They, and she, felt that Ruth had already developed her own style and that she should go her own way. Since then, Ruth Bloch’s career has drastically evolved as one of the main Israeli artists.

In her work Ruth Is eliminating precise detail and relying on line and form alone, she creates simple but powerful and deeply moving figurative bronzes. Whether couples, parents and children, or individual female figures, her creations are an expression of her feelings and emotions.
Ruth Bloch’s growth as sculptor is far easier to trace than her influences. As a figurative sculptor, Bloch most closely relates to Henry Moore for his fluidity of line and his genius for making that which is massive, delicate. Her work entitled, “Fatherhood”, which blends the human forms in an eternal circle, echoes Moore’s ability to realize the full potential of the sculptural form. However Bloch, unlike her predecessor allows no separation between man, woman and child. For her these figures are one, locked in an unending circle of life. The influence of the Italian Master, Alberto Giacometti is also apparent in Ruth Bloch’s art. The stylized elongated figures and the highly textural patinas that characterize her work in bronze are reminiscent of the slender forms of Giacometti’s artistic universe.

As Bloch began raising her own children she felt that the life on a kibbutz was too restrictive for them and her artistic development. She, the children and her husband, who is an expert agriculturist, left for the desert to grow produce for sale in Europe and America. This seclusion also offered Ruth the time she needed to develop her sculpture. But the time spent in the desert sun gave Ruth cancer and sent her to Tel Aviv for two years of medical treatments. Ruth is very philosophical about this period and describes it as a blessing. Back in the city she was discovered by galleries and museums and her reputation as a major talent was born. For the last ten years that talent and immense hard work has taken her and her sculptures to nearly every point around the world. While she belongs to The International Women’s Political Caucus and believes strongly in women’s rights she has never felt discriminated against. The artist is aware that she is often the only woman artist in a particular exhibition and is always the only female sculptor.

Having accomplished many intimate and large-scale works in bronze using the traditional lost wax method, Ruth has now turned her attention to a combining, a synthesis of bronze and glass. In this process Bloch does two surprising and unusual things: she casts unique, one of a kind works, from a mold and she does each step herself. When a sculptor creates a mold it is traditionally to cast an edition and when a sculptor becomes as successful as Ruth Bloch, it is customary to oversee or even be absent when the artisans work is done. From the clay of the figures and the carving directly in wax of the tree branches to the blowtorch utilized to create the patinas; it is all Ruth Bloch. There is something sublime about the serious artist creating usable art. Viewing Bloch’s colorful bowls atop bronze trees with magical figures reading books or lifting a child to the heavens, the spirit of Picasso at Vallauris is not too distant a memory. The often dark Picasso was at his most whimsical and often poignant working in ceramics, creating images of doves, fish and owls on bowls, plates and wine decanters. Bloch began functional works with a series of bronze bowls and coffee tables. Now that she has expanded her visual vocabulary with unique glassworks, the possibilities of expanding this fusion seem limitless to Bloch. Each correspondence from the foundry and each crate that arrives at the gallery fulfill the promise of Bloch; that she is growing with each work. Whether in bronze or the combining of bronze with glass, Bloch’s work offers a peaceful and pure way of seeing. Somehow seeing her feelings aids the viewer in experiencing their own. Bloch captures the experience of pure joy. Her imagery does not confound but affords comfort in contemplation and the warm embrace of loved ones.

Currently Ruth Bloch lives and sculpts in Israel. Her works are exhibited throughout the world in both public and private collections.