Long a celebrated and beloved fixture on the Milwaukee and Wisconsin art scenes, Ruth Grotenrath's work is characterized by a masterful use of color and her artistic responses to everyday scenes and the objects that surrounded her in the homes she shared with her husband Schomer Lichtner. This small exhibition of 14 works is an appetizer for a future larger show scheduled at the MWA and reveals the sheer delight Grotenrath took in color and subject matter - including her favorites: her husband Schomer in his studio, cows, flowers and animals; in other words the things that surrounded her in her eastside-Milwaukee home and at their farm near Holy Hill.

Trained at the Milwaukee State Teachers College, Ruth's early works are very much in-keeping with the social-realist style of the day that concentrated on domestic, and familiar subject matter. Under the auspices of Federal programs during the Great Depression she would be commissioned to execute several Post Office murals in Hart, Michigan; Hudson, Wisconsin and Wayzata, Minnesota. In 1945 she joined the faculty of the Layton Art School in Milwaukee and in 1947 she and Schomer started the Gallery Press in their home producing hand-printed Christmas cards of their own design.

While the Post Office commissions were very public in concept and placement, it is arguably Ruth's domestic still-life paintings that are her hallmark works. She was a true artist in her enthusiastic appreciation of the beauty around her. Almost every piece of fruit that came into her home had to be painted as a still life before she could bear to have it on the family table. "I can hardly bear to have a bunch of grapes or a Bartlett pear eaten," she says. "They are so beautiful." Indeed, the use of the term "still-life" is virtually a misnomer as her works, instead of falling into a "memento-mori" category, resonate with a boldness and sense of life.

Over the course of her 60-year career in art, Ruth had work exhibited at both theNew York and San Francisco World's Fairs, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Serigraph Society of New York and the Art Institute of Chicago amongst others.

Other works by both Ruth and Schomer can be seen in the Lower-level galleries at the MWA and a full retrospective of their work will be on display at the MWA in early 2011.