FRANCKEN, RUTH (French/Czech, b.1924)

Born in Prague, Ruth Francken studied at the Oxford School of Art in 1939, before emigrating to New York in 1942. On her return to Europe in 1950, she concentrated on painting and was invited to participate in many exhibitions. In the 1960s she turned more to sculpture and design, with many of her objects inspired by the human form. A first major museum show was held at the Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, in 1971.
She is a highly accomplished artist whose paintings and sculpture have been championed
by the postmodernist philosopher Jean François Lyotard, who wrote L’Histoire de Ruth,
(Le Castor Astral, Paris,1983). Francken’s work was the subject of a retrospective
exhibition at the Musée de la Cour d’Or, Metz (France) in 1992.