Ellen Roth Deutsch
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42nd Street & Broadway
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BIO
I grew up in New York City in the Bronx during the 1940’s and 1950’s. My teenage exposure to the colors, music, and dance found in the Hollywood movies of the times and the musical theater of off-Broadway and that of forty-second Street has had a big influence on my artwork. Further influence was due to my father, Irving Roir, my main teacher and his three brothers, Ben Roth, Al Ross, and Salo, cartoonists creating panel cartoons for national publications. Their presence was an “up” experience and added humor and caricature to my work. My college and masters background in Biochemistry and Genetics, gave me an appreciation of the environment and the fragility of life. Added to this were my experiences as a target of sexual abuse as a teenager, genetic depression and exposure to much death imagery from the Holocaust. The sum total of all of this has been many different series of work allowing me to express my feelings on paper. There was a lot of work that showed a mix of activity with skeletons and caricatures of people, depicting both the fun side but also the fragility of life, many in a theater environment. The movie Cabaret with Joel Grey as the evil host made me think of him as Death and refers to the skeleton in my work.
It’s been said that my work contains storytelling elements much like Mexican artist Frida Kahlo whose life is told in her paintings. I’ve created a number of artist’s books that while having a story, considers the outside of the book as well as the inside, in the tradition of artist’s books. Mr. Swift and the Brown Shoes came about when I took a class at Artist’s Book Works in typesetting. My idea was to create a book based on my experience with a PERP who was part of my extended family. I received a CityArts A Grant, An IAC Grant, and an NEA Grant to help with the publishing and supplies. Other artist’s books include A Memory About Language; A, My Name Is Audrey; On Not Being Able To Breathe; In The Hand Of God; Transformation Dream.
My paintings, drawings and the book, Mr.Swift and the Brown Shoes, are in many private collections and museum libraries including The Art Institute of Chicago, Joan Flaxman Library, Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The National Museum of Women in the Arts., Washington D.C, The State of Illinois Museum, Chicago Gallery. McDonalds Corporation purchased four cast paper paintings, for their Corporate building and for McDonald’s U. All had the Company’s imagery. A group of framed beaded organs on silk such as the heart, liver, gallbladder, lung and, pancreas have been donated to Seattle Children’s Hospital. They reflect the mouse organs that Dr. Gail Deutsch, my daughter, used in her research with embryonic cells.
A book on my career has been published and printed by www. blurb.com titled From Dark To Light With Humor: The Life and Work of Ellen Roth Deutsch by Jane Stevens. It is 143 pages and includes essays by Avram Eisen, Jane Stevens, Helene Smith Romer and Ellen Roth Deutsch.
I grew up in New York City in the Bronx during the 1940’s and 1950’s. My teenage exposure to the colors, music, and dance found in the Hollywood movies of the times and the musical theater of off-Broadway and that of forty-second Street has had a big influence on my artwork. Further influence was due to my father, Irving Roir, my main teacher and his three brothers, Ben Roth, Al Ross, and Salo, cartoonists creating panel cartoons for national publications. Their presence was an “up” experience and added humor and caricature to my work. My college and masters background in Biochemistry and Genetics, gave me an appreciation of the environment and the fragility of life. Added to this were my experiences as a target of sexual abuse as a teenager, genetic depression and exposure to much death imagery from the Holocaust. The sum total of all of this has been many different series of work allowing me to express my feelings on paper. There was a lot of work that showed a mix of activity with skeletons and caricatures of people, depicting both the fun side but also the fragility of life, many in a theater environment. The movie Cabaret with Joel Grey as the evil host made me think of him as Death and refers to the skeleton in my work.
It’s been said that my work contains storytelling elements much like Mexican artist Frida Kahlo whose life is told in her paintings. I’ve created a number of artist’s books that while having a story, considers the outside of the book as well as the inside, in the tradition of artist’s books. Mr. Swift and the Brown Shoes came about when I took a class at Artist’s Book Works in typesetting. My idea was to create a book based on my experience with a PERP who was part of my extended family. I received a CityArts A Grant, An IAC Grant, and an NEA Grant to help with the publishing and supplies. Other artist’s books include A Memory About Language; A, My Name Is Audrey; On Not Being Able To Breathe; In The Hand Of God; Transformation Dream.
My paintings, drawings and the book, Mr.Swift and the Brown Shoes, are in many private collections and museum libraries including The Art Institute of Chicago, Joan Flaxman Library, Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The National Museum of Women in the Arts., Washington D.C, The State of Illinois Museum, Chicago Gallery. McDonalds Corporation purchased four cast paper paintings, for their Corporate building and for McDonald’s U. All had the Company’s imagery. A group of framed beaded organs on silk such as the heart, liver, gallbladder, lung and, pancreas have been donated to Seattle Children’s Hospital. They reflect the mouse organs that Dr. Gail Deutsch, my daughter, used in her research with embryonic cells.
A book on my career has been published and printed by www. blurb.com titled From Dark To Light With Humor: The Life and Work of Ellen Roth Deutsch by Jane Stevens. It is 143 pages and includes essays by Avram Eisen, Jane Stevens, Helene Smith Romer and Ellen Roth Deutsch.
