This week’s article covers a new exhibit opening at Rutgers Univervsity for the artist Jolan Gross-Bettelheim (1900-1972). While her work is not the usual for this column, I found her pieces to be of a personal interest. I am especially intrigued with women artists and their portrayal of the world around them. An artist of the female persuasion has plenty of opposition in life lined up against her, but to rise above the demands of marriage, motherhood, maintaining a home, to make a name in the male dominated art world is an achievement that deserves recognition.
Jolan Gross-Bettelheim, born in Hungary in 1900, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, and the Academic fur bildende Kunst in Berlin. She married a Hungarian/American, psychiatrist Frigyes Bettelheim in 1925, moving to Cleveland, Ohio where she studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
