Richards Ruben (1925-1998)
Part of the second generation of Abstract Expressionist painters, Richards Ruben is well known for his heavily worked, vibrantly hued surfaces. Although he moved to New York in 1963, Ruben is often considered a “West Coast painter,” because of his affiliation with the lively developing art scene in Los Angeles in the 1950s; he was part of the stable of prominent artists that exhibited at the Paul Kantor and Ferus galleries, among them Jay DeFeo, Billy Al Bengston, Peter Voulkos and Vic Smith. In describing Ruben’s art, art historian Thomas Leavitt has praised “the genius of an artist who uses only visual means to create surprising, even baffling paintings that end up by seeming inevitable.” (1)
Born in 1925 in Los Angeles, Ruben served in the army in World War II. Following his tour of duty, he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute from 1944 to 1946, and again in 1950 for a year. There he studied under West Coast modernist Richard Haines (1906-1986); he also received instruction from the American Scene painter and portraitist Samuel Rosenberg (1896-1972) in Pittsburgh, where he received his first solo exhibition, at the Arts and Crafts Center in 1949.
During the 1950s he produced his first “mature” paintings, heavily wrought canvases bearing forms loosely derived from landscapes and figures. In 1957 he produced a number of canvases inspired by the seasons. In 1958 Ruben exhibited several works in the Summer series at the Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills. In the following decade, the artist increasingly integrated symmetry into his art, building on an interest in calligraphy. He also began to explore the relationships between perception and pure paint, probing the depths of abstraction. His paintings of the 1970s revealed lines etched into heavily impastoed surfaces, realizing a return to the encrusted canvases of his earlier years. One art critic likened Ruben’s layered compositions to “lace on petticoats in the late 18th century.” (2)
Ruben held one-man shows at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1955 and 1961, the Oakland Museum of Art in 1957, the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1970, and at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in 1974 and 1976. He also participated in notable group exhibitions, such as Younger American Painters at the Guggenheim Museum in 1954, Première Biennale de Paris at the Musée d’art modern de la ville de Paris in 1959, and The Last Time I Saw Ferus 1957-1966 at the Newport Harbor Art Museum in 1976.
An esteemed instructor, Ruben taught at his alma mater, Chouinard Art Institute (from 1954 to 1961), the University of California, Los Angeles (1958 to 1962), and, after moving to New York in 1963, at the Cooper Union, Columbia University, and New York University, among other institutions. In 1974, he published an article on art instruction, “Carrots and Peas in a Single Pod,” in which he calls for a reassessment of roles of the student and teacher in the classroom. While teaching a summer course for the Pratt Institute in Venice, Ruben died in 1998, at the age of 72.
His works appear in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena; Corcoran Gallery; Los Angeles County Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Milwaukee Art Center, Wisconsin. Ruben’s art has also been collected by General Electric, American Embassy Abroad, Woodward Foundation, Pepsi Cola Corporation, Chubb Insurance, Equitable Life Insurance, and AT&T, among other corporate collections.
1. T[homas] W. Leavitt, Richards Ruben, exh. cat. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 1976).
2. Vivian Raynor, “Two Kinds of Pop: Fakery and Masculinity,” New York Times, 12 June 1987.
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