Biennale of Art exhibition of textile artist Ruth Adler Schnee includes artist-inspired student work

 "Ruth Adler Schnee: a Passion for Color," co-curated by MAPP's Associate Professor Ronit Eisenbach and Italian architect, Caterina Frisone, opened a summer-long exhibition at the Venice Civic Museums Foundation June 4^th.  The exhibition, in conjunction with the 54th Biennale of Art, features Schnee's breathtaking original hand-printed fabrics, woven textiles and original sketches. The exhibition was brought to Venice in partnership with the Kibel Gallery at the University of Maryland, School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where it was originally developed by Eisenbach. An earlier version of the show was previewed at the Kibel gallery in October 2009.

German-American designer Ruth Adler Schnee has devoted her career to the creation of good form, textures and color combinations. Trained in interior architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and in architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art under the direction of Eliel Saarinen, Ms. Adler Schnee brings architectural themes to the textile industry. As a child she and her family escaped Nazi Germany and settled in Detroit, Michigan, where over the years her circle of friends, colleagues, and clients included Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller and Minoru Yamasaki. Now 88, Ms. Adler Schnee works with Anzea Textiles to create new designs for woven upholstery cloth as well as reissue, translate and mass-produce her brightly colored hand-printed fabric designs from the '40s and '50s.

Included in the exhibition is a relief reinterpretation by M.ARCH candidate James Han. Inspired by Adler-Schnee's Seedpods, Han's paper relief is accompanied by a book describing his design process. Also complimenting Adler Schnee's fabric work is a glass mosaic screen that she designed in collaboration with Angelo Orsoni Furnace in Venice, which is famous for its library of colored glass. The documentary film, "The Radiant Sun: Designer Ruth Adler Schnee" (directed by filmmaker Terri Sarris and co-produced with Eisenbach) is also on display. The exhibition occupies the ground floor space of Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice and will run through August 28th.