Emerging from New York’s early 1980s East Village art scene, Kathy Ruttenberg contributed to the vitality of new figurative expressionism, which offered a vivid counterpoint to the minimalist sculpture and conceptual art that had dominated the 1970s.

Over the past decades, Ruttenberg has worked across painting, sculpture, animation, photography, and books, while becoming particularly recognized for her ceramic sculptures. At the center of her practice is a deeply allegorical form of storytelling, where human, animal, and botanical forms merge into complex psychological narratives.