Ruth Wall, c. 1953.
Ruth Wall was an Abstract Expressionist painter and printmaker associated with the West Coast School of Abstract Expressionism. Born in Wyoming in 1917, Wall spent her early years on a homestead located on a Native American reservation in Uintah, Utah, where her family settled in 1919. During the Great Depression, she worked as a field hand while completing her education. Upon graduating from high school, she enrolled at Brigham Young University. After earning her degree in 1938, she began a career as a high school teacher.
With the onset of World War II, Wall relocated to Los Angeles, where she undertook an engineering course and subsequently worked as an Army materiel inspector. In 1944, Wall enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) with aspirations of becoming a pilot. However, due to the military’s restrictions on women in combat roles, she instead served as a ferry pilot, transporting aircraft from manufacturing plants to training fields. Following her discharge in 1949, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and, in 1950, enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) under the G.I. Bill.
At CSFA, Wall studied printmaking under James Budd Dixon and Robert McChesney, producing gestural Abstract Expressionist lithographs. That same year, she traveled to Paris to further her studies at the Académie Frochot. While in France, her work was exhibited in group shows at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, and Galerie Huit.
In 1955, Wall returned to CSFA—by then renamed the San Francisco Art Institute—where she continued her studies under Nathan Oliveira and Elmer Bischoff. Immersed in the vibrant artistic milieu of North Beach, she dedicated herself to painting. Over the course of her career, Wall participated in numerous exhibitions in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Wall went on to spend much of her life in North Beach, San Francisco, where she resided for fifty-five years. In her later years, she returned to Utah, where she passed away on December 14, 2009, in Vernal.
Wall’s works can be found in several institutions, including the Monterey Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the San José Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.