Ruth adler schnee biography

Ruth Adler Schnee at the “The Henry Ford: Through a Jewish Lens,” a collaborative event between The Henry Ford and the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan. Associate Curator Katherine White and Ruth Adler Schnee co-presented a selection of her textiles held at The Henry Ford. Photo Credit: KMS Photography

Ruth Adler Schnee was a pioneering designer and a dear friend of The Henry Ford. It is with great sadness that we learned of her passing on January 5, 2023, just a few months shy of her 100th birthday.

Ruth Adler Schnee was born on May 13, 1923, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to Marie Salomon and Joseph Adler. Her mother, Marie, had trained in the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Munich and then at the Bauhaus, the revolutionary modernist design school in Weimar. Ruth's father’s family had long been book and antiques dealers. Joseph Adler worked in the family trade until they moved to Dusseldorf in 1927, when Ruth was just 4 years old. Creativity was encouraged in the Adler household. Ruth began designing her own clothes as a child and she recalls playing in the studio o

Ruth Adler Schnee

Ruth Adler Schnee (1923–2023) was a legend of modern design. Arriving to the United States from Germany after escaping the Nazi regime in 1938, Schnee embarked on a pioneering career in textiles and environmental design that would help shape modernism in the 20th century. With masters like Paul Klee, Raymond Loewy, Frank Lloyd Wright and Eliel Saarinen as her teachers, Schnee forged a path through the design world at a time when few American architecture or design firms would hire Jews or women.

A maverick purveyor of modern design ideals, Schnee brought modernism to Michigan with the groundbreaking retail store Adler-Schnee, which she founded with her husband. As an artist, she devoted her career to the search for innovation in form, texture and color. Ruth represents the indelible force of women designers on the built environment, and until her passing in 2023, she continued to live and create in metro Detroit, designing building interiors and woven textiles, and advocated for the preservation of the city’s modernist history. Schnee’s pioneering work as a

Ruth Adler Schnee

Textile designer and interior designer (1923–2023)

Ruth Adler Schnee (néeAdler; May 13, 1923 – January 5, 2023) was a German-born American textile designer and interior designer based in Michigan. Schnee was best known for her modern prints and abstract-patterns of organic and geometric forms.[1] She opened the Ruth Adler-Schnee Design Studio with her spouse Edward Schnee in Detroit, which operated until 1960. The studio produced textiles and later branched off into Adler-Schnee Associates home decor, interiors, and furniture.[2][3]

Biography

Ruth Adler was born on May 13, 1923, in Frankfurt, Weimar Republic Germany, to the German Jewish family of Marie and Joseph Adler.[2][4] The family later moved to Düsseldorf.[5] In 1937, when she was 14, she went to the Degenerate Art Exhibition, This exhibit was designed by the Nazis to be a criticism of modern art, but it inspired Adler Schnee, particularly the vivid colors of Wassily Kandinsky's paintings.[6] She and her family fled

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