Aaronel deRoy Gruber, an artist who left a lasting impression
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Artist Aaronel deRoy Gruber, with two of her Plexiglas sculptures in 1981, when she was named Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Artist of the Year.
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Pittsburgh has lost one of its consummate artists. Aaronel deRoy Gruber, who died Wednesday, four days from her 93rd birthday, had what it takes to be an artist: talent, brains and the means to reach many of her dreams.
The potential she showed as a 1940 graduate of Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) with a degree in costume economics propelled her throughout her long artistic career. After raising three children, she easily transferred her early eye for fashion design to abstract expressionism. Then came op art, leading to steel and kinetic and illuminated Plexiglas sculpture, to finally toned photography at which she excelled. Even when her materials were steel discards, she saw their inherent beauty and turned it into art.
Her father was a noted Pittsburgh dentist, Joseph Israel de Roy. Her name is a feminized form of Aaron (she was named for an uncle), with the modified French "elle." In midlife, she inherited from a Southern aunt, helping her attainments. But I once saw her on her knees at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts cleaning the floor for an exhibition. When I asked why, she said, "Because I belong to this organization."
Unlike many regional artists, Ms. Gruber was always in tune with what was occurring in the New York art capital as well as exhibiting locally. After years of art shows in Pittsburgh, in 1960, her work was selected as the outstanding painting in the Boston Arts Festival and that year was the best in show at the annual exhibition in Newport, R.I.
From 1969 to '71, she exhibited at the highly regarded Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York, just one of many American and European galleries that showed her work. Between 1958 and 1999, she had 48 one-person exhibitions and received more than 73 invitational shows, awards and honors. It is an enviable record, not to mention her works being included in 19 art museums and at least 21 corporate collections, mentions in art books and works sent on world tours with the United States Information Service.
First Published July 8, 2011 12:00 am
