Although active as an artist in Cleveland through the 1980s, Dorothy Rutka is best known for her sobering Depression-era intaglio prints depicting social ills. Born and raised in Grand Rivers, Michigan, Rutka moved to Ohio to attend the Cleveland School of Art. She graduated in 1929 with a specialization in portraiture and did additional course work in the Huntington Polytechnic Institute. She married Jack Kennon, political editor for the Cleveland News. In 1931 she toured Europe for seven months. In the early 1930s she worked as a writer and illustrator for the Bystander and in 1936 was part of the Cleveland graphic arts project of the Works Progress Administration. She joined the Cleveland Artist’s Union and the American Artists’ Congress. In Cleveland she showed at the Ross Widen Gallery, the 1030 Gallery, and the Art Colony (1940s–50s). She also exhibited frequently in the May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1929–66) and in exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Dayton, Brooklyn, and Washington, D.C. In 1960 she married Philip Porter, who was named executive editor of the Plain Dealer in 1963. They were killed by an unknown intruder in their home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Transformations in Cleveland Art. (CMA, 1996), p. 235
Biographical information exists in the Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.