Biography

Ruth Grotenrath and her husband, Schomer Lichtner, achieved the remarkable feat of making a living from their art, starting in the depths of the Depression and continuing toward the end of the 20th century. Their styles evolved from the social realism popular in the 1930s to a more colorful and user-friendly sort of art after World War II. This is not to equate their individual output, which differed considerably in its tone and focus.

Ruth Grotenrath was born in Milwaukee in 1912. She went to school at the Barlett Avenue School and Riverside High School in Milwaukee. Her abilities were recognized in high school, where she was given a private studio. She attended Milwaukee State Teacher College (later the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), planning to teach art upon graduation. Her teachers in college were Gustave Moeller and Elsa Ulbricht. Moeller was a Wisconsin-born painter who focused on scenes of small-town America. Ulbricht was an inspiring leader who directed the Milwaukee Art Institute during the Depression and founded the WPA Handicraft Project (1935-1943) to train and employ unskilled women. She provided Grotenrath with a compelling role model as a successful artist and independent woman.

Grotenrath was introduced to her future husband by Gustave Moeller in 1931. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1933 and married Lichtner the following year. The couple lived initially in a rustic cabin outside of Milwaukee. Grotenrath and Lichtner were both employed by the federal government in 1935. Their styles in that period matched the demands of American Regionalism, with serious subjects and somber tones.

In the 1930s Grotenrath participated in exhibitions of the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors. Starting in the late 1930s and continuing to the 1950s, she exhibited at the Wisconsin Salon of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed several Post Office murals - "Rounding Up the Stock" for Hart, MI (1941), "Unloading a River Barge" for Hudson, MI (1943), and "Pines of the North" for Wayzata, MN (1947). During this period she and Lichtner moved into a house on Milwaukee's East Side (1943) where their son Peter was born. She took a position on the staff of the Layton School of Art in 1945, teaching still life painting.

Grotenrath took part in the Wisconsin Centennial exhibition in 1948. Meanwhile her style was evolving, with the use of brighter colors and the adoption of a simpler line. This evolution coincided with her interest in Asian art and Zen philosophy. Her husband's friendship with Frank Lloyd Wright may have been a contributing factor as well.

In the 1950s Grotenrath exhibited printed drapery fabrics at the Wisconsin State Fair. She started using water-based casein paint and developed a distinctive style of painting on paper. Her work was often compared with Matisse, having a flattened sense of space and many colorful patterns.

In 1961 Grotenrath taught design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and at The Clearing Folk School in Door County. Later in the 1960s she and Lichtner both taught at the Wustum Museum in Racine. By this time her home and garden in Milwaukee were decorated with Asian themes, and objects from her daily life often showed up in her work.

She and Lichtner attended a lecture by Alan Watts at Beloit College in 1961. They traveled to Japan in 1965, meeting Watts on their journey.

In the 1970s Grotenrath's colorful art was very popular in Wisconsin galleries. After her death in 1988 she received a Wisconsin Visual Artist Lifetime Achievement Award (2007).

Critical Analysis

The evolution of Ruth Grotenrath's art is fascinating to observe. Her painting from 1935, "Sleeping Girl," received the Purchase Prize at the 22nd Annual Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors Exhibition. It is warm and sympathetic work, a masterpiece of the realist genre. But her "Modern Madonna" of the same year is an angry, polemical work - something she could have painted with an intended audience of Diego Rivera and the Mexican muralists rather than the good citizens of Milwaukee.

That polemical tone did get her into trouble with her mural for Hudson, MI. She probably intended to emphasize the hard work that had gone into the building of the town, but public reaction to her mural was hostile. The local citizens felt that she had condemned them as slave-drivers over a passive populace.

Her other Post Office murals were very different. The one in Hart, Michigan shows a boy on horseback amid a crowd of lively animals. It's a vibrant celebration of rural life. By the time of her 1947 mural for Wayzata, Minnesota, Grotenrath was clearly under the influence of Asian art. She depicts pine woods in the winter with feathery brushstrokes and delicate flakes of snow. Not an animal in sight, and certainly no slave-drivers could be imagined.

Grotenrath's artistic evolution accelerated in the 1950s, when she adopted a very bright palette and focused on the portrayal of everyday objects in lively an colorful still lifes. These proved to be very popular paintings, and she continued in this style for the rest of her career.

Murals

• Hart, Michigan - Post Office: Boy Rounding Up the Stock
• Wayzata, Minnesota - Post Office: Wayzata (Pines of the North)
• West Bend, Wisconsin - Museum of Wisconsin Art: Unloading a River Barge

References

1. Casein Paintings by Ruth Grotenrath (Racine Art Museum).
2. Hudson Newsroom, Old post office mural was always controversial, Republican Eagle July 31 (2008).
3. Margaret Fish, Ruth Grotenrath, Wisconsin Architect January (1967). p. 16
4. Kevin Milaeger, Ruth Grotenrath, Vintage Wisconsin Art January 15 (2015).
5. Ruth Grotenrath (David Barnett Gallery).
6. Ruth Grotenrath (Gallery of Wisconsin Art).
7. Schomer Lichtner and Ruth Grotenrath Papers, 1918-2009 (University of Wisconsin Digital Collections).
8. Unloading a River Barge, by Ruth Grotenrath, 1943 (Wikimedia Commons).
9. Bobby Tanzilo, The Warehouse follows ace Kentridge show with fabulous Grotenrath exhibit, On Milwaukee January 30 (2023).