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Photo of Peter Ruta at Rancho Nuevo 1974 or 1975. In the 90s these woods became an army base. Paintings from the 70s. He painted seven days a week, the …
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Peter Ruta painted in Chiapas from 1973-78, outdoors in meadows and woodlands, indoors on rainy days. Here is a small sample of the work, now forty years old. In his last recorded interview he told the questioner, “It takes forty years for the paint to dry,” meaning it takes that long for the public and indeed for the artist, to see what he has done.(see paintings above)
“Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.” This line from an essay of Yeats was quoted at Peter Ruta’s Memorial March 2017 by fellow artist and friend of fifty years, Paul Resika. A perfect summation of Ruta’s selfless absorption in his work as a painter.
quoted from WB Yeats 1911 Essay Synge and the Irish Theatre
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Alfredo’s hammock, in the village of Tramonti, up the hill from Maiori in S. Italy on a very hot summer day 2009.
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painted 1974 in Chiapas, Mexico. Twenty years before the Zapatista uprising
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Mural still visible in part in fall 2015, in the basement of the Art Students League New York City. The artist, upper left, witnesses beating of a labor leader by a …
Update on Peter Ruta
Peter Ruta began painting around 1940 at the Art Students League in New York City.In those days, like so many of his contemporaries, he was a political painter, interested in …
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Nothing went to waste in the painter’s studio, as you can see from this assemblage of tubes from mid September 2016, as he completed or nearly completed his last work, …
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sunflowers painted summer 2016, a quick sketch in oils. Below, Ruta’s last unfinished painting. For his daughters 15th wedding anniversary mid September, her husband brought her a big bunch of …