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Book Review: Work details artist's success in various types of media
Thursday, May 03, 2001 By M. Cray Sheedy
Pittsburgh artist Aaronel de Roy Gruber has explored painting, sculpture and photography and, according to a book by Donald Miller, has excelled at them all.
"It is unusual," the former Post-Gazette art critic writes, "for an artist to be a constant prize winner in painting, sculpture, and photography, but so it has been for de Roy Gruber."
"Aaronel: The Art of Aaronel de Roy Gruber," a coffee table-formatted, lavishly illustrated book, has text by Post-Gazette senior editor Miller, a foreword by Carnegie Museum of Art director Richard Armstrong and comment by Silver Eye Center for Photography executive director Linda Benedict-Jones.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1918, Gruber loved to draw as a child and pursued studio arts throughout her education. Although her degree from the then Carnegie Institute of Technology was in science, she studied extensively in the college of fine arts. Among her teachers were Samuel Rosenberg, Roy Hilton and Robert Lepper, whom she described as her idol.
Her husband and their children claimed the next few years of her life, but she was soon studying and painting again.
During this time she was exploring painting to its fullest: She experimented with gestures and surface depth. She incorporated objects into her canvas. The work that resulted from these years of experimentation was shown in 1958 in New York City in her premiere solo exhibition.
In the 1960s, Gruber's interest was piqued by sculpture. It was not long before she was collecting steel discards from the company her husband headed for use as sculptural materials. "I gave new life to these discarded elements because I saw beauty in them," she says.
Her Steelcityscape was displayed on the portico of Pittsburgh's City-County Building before being moved to Allegheny Riverfront Park. It is reflective of the many Gruber works on display in public space throughout the country.
When her New York gallery suggested that she use lighter materials, the artist began working with Plexiglas. The Flint Institute of Art, which organized the first exhibition of plastics as art, invited her to participate and purchased her piece for its permanent collection. National recognition followed, and her sculptures became part of more than 500 public and private collections internationally.
Despite her success, the artist came to feel that "perhaps I had moved too far from nature." She looked for more immediacy in her work and found it in photography. With her husband, she traveled the world "to capture strong images worth preserving beyond their expected time." The award-winning painter and sculptor was now achieving similar recognition for her photographs.
This remarkable career constitutes the first quarter of the book. It speaks to the education, the experience, the excellence that informs the 68 photographs which follow -- 23 of which document Pittsburgh, while others take the viewer across America and the globe.
The variety and beauty of the images and the author's willingness to allow them to speak for themselves create a dignity and power that is a tribute to both the artist and her chronicler.
M. Cray Sheedy is site coordinator of the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art at Ligonier Valley.
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