Ruth Horam

Ruth Horam (b. Tel Aviv 1931) is an Israeli painter and sculptor, graduate of St. Martin's School of Art, London (1950s), lives in Jerusalem.

In 1960 she won the UNESCO Prize for Painting, in Paris. Between 1964 and 1967 she chaired the Jerusalem Association of Painters and Sculptors. In 1969 she travelled to Seoul, S. Korea where she studied the art of calligraphy, returning to Israel in 1973. In 1983 she was Guest-Artist at 'Arabia' Ceramics in Finland. In 1996 she received the MASTO Foundation grant for Creativity.

Over the years Horam has held numerous one-woman shows in Israel and around the world. Of this, she says: An exhibition offers exposure. I don't work for the drawer – I want to be seen. My message is neither political nor social, but aesthetic. I don't want to scare or shock through my art. And yes, I am a political creature, I go to demonstrations. But in my work I first of all want to show myself. It's a very egoistic need: to enjoy what I do and what I show, I have to like the product and I want others around to like it too. But the latter is secondary.

Since 1993 Ruth Horam has worked at the Jerusalem Printing Workshop. Her monotype prints are developed from multi-layered freely printed meshes. In the process she interposes various materials such as paper cuttings, leaves, twigs, scraps of fabric, nature or urban landscape photos. Her works are conceived and done in groups following a theme, each print being a unique creation.

Ruth Horam has engaged in outdoor art projects, mostly in Jerusalem but in other Israeli towns too (As early as 1968 she spoke of the importance of this endeavor). Such works, often done in collaboration with sculptor Magdalena Hefetz, emphasise ecological aspects, especially the subject of recycling -- making use, for example, of broken car parts or wrecks, to create outdoor art for public view. Among other public art works are a ceramic wall at Be'er Sheva Municipal Library (1992), a mural at the Marshall Center at the Jerusalem Gates Building (1999), colored metal wall sculpture on the outer walls of Jerusalem buildings – at the Hebrew University, School of Arts and Sciences, the Beth Tsafafa High School, and an environmental sculpture in colored metal at Yovel School at Givat Masua (the metal works in Jerusalem were done with collaboration of artist Magdalena Hefetz).

Ruth Horam has also designed book covers (including the cover design for books of poetry by her late husband, Israeli ambassador Yehuda Horam, who died in 2002).

Works by Ruth Horam are to be found in several collections, including those of the Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum, the Ayala Sachs collection, the Stanley Batkin collection, New York, and the Bernschweik Family collection, Switzerland.

In his opening address in the artist's honor at a 1996 exhibit of her works held at the Jerusalem Theater, Israel Museum's Chief Curator Yigal Tzalmona said: No matter where she was she always grasped that which was most significant about the place. Korea connected her with the mystical aspects of the Far East. When in Finland she was taken with the whiteness of the place, as though feeling an organic bond with nature and the environment. And there is of course Jerusalem. For me she is a kind of visual poet."