Publisher's Synopsis
Still highly productive at the age of 85, Ruth Duckworth is one of the most important women sculptors working today. Her body of work over the past five decades has made a considerable contribution to the development of the Modernist style in sculpture, and her art reflects Modernism's radical way of working and thinking. Duckworth was born in Germany and has been active in England and the United States. She has employed a wide range of materials and techniques during her career, including stone carving, metal fabrication, bronze casting and ceramic modelling. However, her most celebrated works have been in the medium of clay. She has received international acclaim for her visionary ceramic sculptures, and her work is gaining recognition within the broader context of contemporary art. This first major monograph, which accompanies an international touring exhibition, provides a long-overdue assessment of Duckworth's significance. It reveals the conceptual and iconographic foundations that her work shares with other important Modernist sculptors including Constantin Brancusi, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi, and ceramicists Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. The historical, cultural and artistic importance of Duckworth's oeuvre is examined in a two-part narrative by Jo Lauria and Tony Birks, as each discusses and evaluates Duckworth's position in the Modernist movement that swept through Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century and was to exert considerable influence internationally.
