Jaffa Port, watercolor and ink on paper, 50 × 35 cm, 1950s. A gem by the artist.Ruth Schloss (1922–2013) was an Israeli artist born in Germany. She immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1937. In the late 1930s she studied at the “New Bezalel,” among others with Mordecai Ardon. Throughout her career she remained committed to figurative art, placing the human being at the center of her work. She never abandoned her distinctive, humanistic gaze toward society’s vulnerable and marginalized—those subjected to oppression, deprivation, and discrimination: children, the elderly, women, refugees, and even animals.In her early years, her work consisted mainly of ink drawings and watercolors on paper; these works became a hallmark of her practice and continued to define her visual language. Her paintings are associated with the Socialist Realist tendency that flourished among some Israeli artists influenced by socialist and communist movements in Israel and abroad, such as Shraga Weil and Yohanan Simon. In later years, as she began producing large-scale acrylic paintings on canvas, her work became more expressive while continuing to focus on similar themes—elderly figures, blindfolded detainees, and animals with bared teeth. She held solo exhibitions in leading galleries and museums in Israel.