ART WORK BY GERMAN GREAT COLLECTOR THE LATE RUTH FROM 1914 TO 2013 GOING TO WASTE AFTER THE CLOSE OF GALLERY WATATU IN NAIROBI

1914-1996

BY FRANCIS ILAHAKA

The closing of Gallery  Watatu in Nairobi one of the biggest art Center in Sub Sahara is a blow to East Africa artist who depended on it

The Gallery was founded in 80s by one of German top art collectors of our time as far as art work is concern.

According to art books the late Ruth whose work are now  going to waste collected the highest numbers of art work ever collected by a single art collector in Africa something which we should be happy of.

While in Nairobi he motivated and promoted numerous painters among the Jak Katarikawe Francis Kahuru and Ngecha artist  who later nicknamed her Mama art.

In perceiving paintings and judging artists, Ruth’s success proved that her vision included an eye for work that deserved a place in the world. Throughout her life maintained an objective, encouraging and open manner.

Ruth.S.Schaffner was born in 1914 in Mannheim, Germany and educated in Berlin until until when her father, Dr.Hans Staudinger-secretary of state in Prussia and MP for Hamburg-was imprisoned.

Upon the arrest of her father, Ruth and the family did what appeared to be appropriate at that moment-migration. The family fled Germany first for Switzerland and then to France. While here Ruth started studying photography which she graduated in together with economics later after moving to the United States in 1935.

During the World War II she was a photographer with the Free- French Information Service. She later became a film maker and photographer with her first husband Hassolt Davis, on expeditions first to French Guiana in South America and in 1948-49 to West Africa’s Ivory Coast.

Together with Davis the film maker-journalist husband, she wrote two books about these expeditions and made two documentary films for Warner Brothers in Hollywood.

Ruth spend most of her life in the 1950’s working as a television producer in New York. It is during this period that she got married to a French painter Michael Cadoret de L’Epinneguin through whom she became part of the European art community.

Having interacted with renown artists like Fernanrd Leger, Marc Chagall, Juan Miro, Marcel Duchamps; with surrealists Salvador Dali and Tangui and Americans Mark Rotho and Alexander Calder, famous for his mobiles, Ruth realized that she developed a knowledge and strong love for art.

As she would later tell her friends, “I suddenly realized I had an eye and that it was a good one. I had not really had a teacher. I learned what good work was by osmosis. It was an incredible time to have been in New York.” Armed with intense intellectual and artistic feeling, Ruth together with the late Husband, Joseph Schaffner of the Chicago men’s clothing chain ‘Hart Schaffner and Marx’ made several ‘artistic’ trips and travelled extensively in the 1960’s to see the emerging contemporary art of Japan and Australia among many other.

Ruth’s first full taste of the world of contemporary art came after the death of Joseph Schaffner in 1972. Using the inheritance left to her by him, Ruth opened a large art gallery on State Street in Santa Barbara, California.

The gallery was in the words of a local sculptor, Doug Edge, “not just ahead of time for Santa Barbara, but really years ahead of Los Angeles. Her gallery at the State Street was much larger than any other space in L.A that I remember.”

Ruth Schaffner was the first major contemporary art dealer and gallery owner to see that Santa Barbara had the potential not to become not merely a charming, provincial art colony, but because of its proximity to Los Angeles, to become an important centre for arts, operating outside Los Angeles which showed the work of a number of now famous artists, among them David Hockney and Robert Therrien. She returned to Santa Barbara  in 1980 and opened a small gallery in Ortega Street, where she showcased the work of emerging artists.

Driven by what had controlled her life throughout her stay in this world the need to see young people, unknown people, get a chance to show their work- Ruth thought wide and hard and decided to run an art gallery in Africa that would make this dream realizable.

On the decision, Ruth remarked, “I’m certainly not going there to buy and sell souvenirs. In any case all that sort of thing is finished. Much of what was essentially of value to the African culture, or to western collectors was bough up ling ago.”

“I intend to open my gallery in Nairobi in order to participate primarily to provide artists there the kind of professional viewing space and professional representation that their art demand. I could say it is to give them confidence to provide a credibility. That is why I want to be part of it.” She quipped.

Schaffners involvement with Africa goes back nearly 40 years when she first came to the continent in 1948 to film the customs of some West Africa peoples. A film that is said to have become priceless because it documented much of African culture that has been changes in the past 40 years by the influx of foreign influence and the modernization process

She moved to Nairobi in 1984 with her husband, businessman Adama Diawara and took over Gallery Watatu on December 1, the same year, after looking at the possible gallery sites. She brought to the gallery her years of experience in the international art scene and her fierce commitment to promoting artists.

What Ruth did immediately she took over the gallery whose roof-garden  the current  multi-storied  Lonrho House stands on, was to enlarge the scale of its operations, extend the premises, increase local commercial patronage, create Watatu Foundation (a separate organization for development and archives), and expand the stable  of artists to include many who had little formal art education.

The dimensions of what she accomplished during her tenure as director and owner of Gallery Watatu are numerous. Her acute sense and knowledge of hot who to spot talented and hard-working artists, how to nurture personal and original elements in their work, and how to foster their sense of professional identity left an indelible mark on the face of Watatu.

One of them being the Ngecha artists which consists of Sane Wadu, Eunice Wairimu (his wife) , Sebastian Kiarie, Meek Gichugu, Wanyu Brush, Chain Muhandi and others not quite Ngecha but close to the gallery like Joel Oswaggo, Kivuthi Mbuno, Zechariah Mbutha, Francis Kahuri among others.

Already in existence at the gallery at the time of Ruth’s take-over were a group of other artists like John Diang’a, Jak Katarikawe, Theresa Musoke, Ancent Soi, Etale Sukuro, Timothy Brooke, Samuel Wanjau and of course two other founders of the gallery Robin Anderson and Jony Waite.

Ruth’s achievements are also indicated by the list of prestigious group exhibitions in which Watatu Artists participated: “Wegzeichen” (signs)-1991, “African Explores” 1991-1994, “Africa Hoy” (Africa Now) 1992-1993.“Recontres Africaines” (African Encounters) 1994, “Africus” (Johannesburg Biennale) 1995, “Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa” 1995-1996,” The Osaka Triennalle” 1993 and the Dakar Biennale 1993 and 1996. There were also many other solo showings in commercial galleries in New York, California, Germany and Japan.