Ruth Duckworth

This book firmly establishes the artist in the pantheon of twentieth-century sculptors, in a class with Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. Duckworth referred to herself not as a potter or ceramicist, but as a sculptor with clay, and this volume takes her at her word, foregrounding her sculptural production. As Emmanuelle Cooper wrote in her obituary: “In both her life and work, Duckworth’s background was one of non-conformity. In Germany, as a young girl, she risked prosecution by defacing a Nazi monument and resented being unable to attend art school because her father was Jewish. Most challenging of all was her determination to gain international respectability as a sculptor working primarily in clay.