Ruth Marten

Ruth Marten started her career as a tattoo artist in the 1970s before working as an illustrator for a range of publishers and magazines in the US. Her visual artwork has earned well-deserved international recognition only in the last few years.

This book is the second publication on the highly acclaimed New York artist and presents Ruth Marten’s most recent creations – 19 large-format works on paper produced between fall 2018 and summer 2019.

Marten used photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries as the basis for these artworks. By overpainting the photos, she created literally fantastic pictures that seem to allow the impossible to become possible. Like the pioneers of surrealism, she developed a world between dream and nightmare that is full of mystery, where inanimate objects suddenly become alive and where new, unheard-of phenomena shake up our established worldview. Her works abound in psychoanalytic enigmas that have sprung from the depths of her artistic subconscious.

Text in English and German.