Ruth Schmidt, nee Ilonka. Born in Transylvania in 1982, today she lives and works in Budapest (Hungary). 

If they ask her how long she has been painting, she would say since 2017, even though she started earlier, attending several drawing and painting classes. These years before 2017, she prefers to call “experiments.”

The breakthrough happened in 2017, when she met a wonderful artist, her Master, Kalman Gasztonyi and she began to learn the mysteries of classical oil painting.

The years 2017-2021 she calls ‘The Learning Years’ in which she produced vast amount of study paintings in many styles.

She particularly likes the works of Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Albert Bierstadt, Rembrandt van Rijn, Karoly Marko …. The names bear witness she enjoyed experimenting with different styles and techniques. These can be seen mainly in her eclectic study paintings, where she uses a mixture of features from various ages, styles, and trends. Her admiration for Warhol and Mondrian can be seen in her pop art and Mondrian-inspired geometric figurative paintings. Her search for a way can be seen in her paintings during these days.

In 2020 she started to paint her paintings on symbolist and surrealist themes, in realistic style. She found herself in them.

Her teacher, Kalman Gasztonyi writes about her:

“Ruth Schmidt draws on the knowledge of the masters of past centuries, using their painting techniques to address the people of the 21st century. Her works, painted with the biggest professional shyness and fantastic precision, provide an aesthetic visual experience that is unmistakably unique to her. The paintings are narratives where the bare experience gets enriched with stories and feelings. Ruth’s basic nature is fun, a positive worldview, humour. Unfortunately, humour is having less and less space in contemporary painting, even though it is one of the greatest gifts of our lives. Fortunately, the Creator was generous with this gift to Ruth. The depiction of divine power also appears in her paintings, as her faith is very important to her. Her painting is perhaps best characterized by symbolism, but surrealism also appears occasionally. After all her ‘study paintings’ we will not find in her work a simple still life, or landscape or classically planned compositions. There is always a ‘twist’ by Ruth out there that transcends and makes the realistic painting to art. 

Ruth’s talent, diligence, and sense of purpose have many, many more excellent paintings in store for us.”

She participated in exhibitions with her paintings at home and abroad. Currently, her paintings can be seen in a permanent exhibition on Rozsa str. in Budapest (Hungary).