Ruth G. Waddy

Ruth Waddy, LACMA. 

Ruth Gilliam Waddy was born Wilanna Ruth Gilliam in Lincoln, Nebraska on January 7, 1909. She was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, living close to Minneapolis Museum of Art— inspiring her early love of art. She married William Waddy, had one child, and divorced him. She studied at University of Minnesota with hopes of becoming a teacher until the Great Depression urged her to move to Chicago for work as a domestic servant. Eventually, she relocated to California, meeting artist Noah Purifoy whilst working at a Los Angeles County Hospital. After developing epilepsy, she retired and fully committed to art well into her fifties, studying at Los Angeles City College and Otis Art Institute. 

The Key, 1969, American American Art and Artists by Dr. Samella Lewis, published 1990, pg 113. 

Waddy is known mostly for creating remarkable black and white linoleum prints containing stories that range from still life to everyday Black existence. In these typically small scale works, her keen attention to line weight, shape, pattern, and direction lean on the sensitivity of her chosen subjects. The stark outlines of the girls in Three Sisters have a stencil quality that shifts from the solid figures of Graduating Kindergarten to Grade 1. She explored different ways of using printmaking tools— contouring being her prominent strength.  

Three Sisters, linocut, 13” x 9 1/2,” 1970, Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) Collection.

“I like social issues mostly, rather than beautiful things such as beautiful landscapes or a beautiful scene. I like to look at them, but never felt the urge to paint or make a print of any,” Waddy said of her subject matter in a 1991 interview with Karen Anne Mason. 

Graduating From Kindergarten to Grade 1, linocut, 19” x 19,” 1982, Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) Collection.

Pomegranates, mounted print, 1966, Hammer Museum. 

Shapes, linocut, 11” x 11 3/4,” 1969, Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) Collection.

In 1965, at the invitation of Margaret Burroughs and the encouragement of profound draftsman Charles White, Waddy traveled to the Soviet Union (visiting Moscow, Leningrad, Alma-Ata, and Baku) with eight American delegates to represent herself and twenty other Black artists from the California area. This demonstrated her great importance to not only her own community, but the national art world— a talented, knowledgeable Black woman elder artist entrusted to speak for them. After the horrendously unfair cancellation of an exhibition due to being unable to acquire a Henry Oshawa Tanner piece, Waddy then founded the Art West Association, migrating across the United States collecting the prints of emerging Black artists for Prints by American Negro Artists— a 1967 effort funded by the National Endowment of the Arts. 

She has also visited Paris, France, Milan and Florence in Italy, and Tobago, Trinidad. 

Self portrait, linoleum print, 23” x 19 3/4,” 1966, from the The Eileen Harris Norton Collection, photographed by Charles White. 

Waddy has shown work at the legendary Womanspace Gallery (1970-1974) as well as the Dickson Art Galleries at University of California both in Los Angeles, California, the Oakland Museum in Oakland, California, the Studio Museum of Harlem in New York City, New York, all in the United States of America, and in the Internationale Buchkunst-Ausstellung in Leipzig, East Germany. She received many awards from League of Allied Artists and the Woman’s Building both in Los Angeles, California, National Conference of Artists, St. Petersburg, Virginia and Berkeley, California, and an honorary doctorate from Otis Art Institute.

Waddy also co-authored Black Artists on Art with Dr. Samella Lewis.

The Exhorters, linoleum print on wove paper, 17 3/4” x 12,” 1976, invaluable. 

On May 24, 2003, Ruth Waddy passed away at age 94, leaving behind an outstanding body of work and writings. Her archive is at Amistad Research, Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Ruth Waddy with her work and white dog, photographed by John Malmin, Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives.

In addition, Waddy’s sketchbook filled with art by noted Black artists was acquired by Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

“The portrait of Waddy [by Cedric Adams, an artist and LACMA’s senior art preparator] stands out among drawings in the sketchbook by such artists as Romare Bearden, Houston Conwill, Dana Chandler, David Hammons, Varnette Honeywood, Lois Mailou Jones, Dr. Samella Lewis, William Pajaud, Noah Purifoy, and Timothy Washington because it alludes Waddy’s significance as documenter, supporter, promoter, and organizer of black art and artists during the 1960s and 70s.

“The blank sketchbook was a birthday gift from her friend Evangeline Montgomery, inscribed with, ‘Have your friends fill up this book in 1968 and get us published in ’69. A new thing to think about.’”