Russell Limbach, known as “Butch,” was born in Massillon, Ohio. After making his first lithographs as a teenager in a large commercial house, he attended the Cleveland School of Art, 1922–26. He quit and worked in Cleveland in a shop-ad agency for a few years. After he was fired, he went to work for the publicity department of the Union Trust Company. In 1929 and 1930 he traveled to Europe, visiting Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Beginning in 1931, he made political cartoons for periodicals such as the Cleveland Magazine and the radical leftist publications the New Masses and the Daily Worker. An active member of the Cleveland Print Makers, he gave public demonstrations of printmaking and was one of the club’s directors. Limbach exhibited widely during the 1930s. His first solo show was at the Kokoon Klub (1931), and he had a show devoted to color lithographs at the Cleveland Print Market (1932). He participated in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1926–35) and in numerous exhibitions in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and Cleveland (late 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s). He was a member of the American Artists’ Congress, taking part in the America Today exhibition (1936). He was one of two Cleveland printmakers commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project in 1934. He moved to New York in 1935 and became technical advisor for the Works Progress Administration graphics workshop in New York, making the project’s first color lithograph. He taught at Walt Whitman High School in New York City beginning in 1939 and left the WPA in 1940. In 1941 Limbach joined the faculty at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and remained there until his death.
Transformations in Cleveland Art. (CMA, 1996), p. 233