Ruth Gikow (Russian: Руфь Борисовна Гикова, romanized: Ruf Borisovna Gikova; January 6, 1915 - April 2, 1982) was an American visual artist known primarily for her work as a genre painter.

[4] She was not present for the "simple diversions of her age group" due to prioritizing her art and her night time job at Woolworth's.

[citation needed] She joined the New York City WPA Federal Art Project in 1935, where she was allowed to dedicate herself to her artwork full-time.

[citation needed] In 1939, inspired by the muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, she applied and later won a commission to paint murals for Bronx Hospital, Rockefeller Center and the New York World's Fair.

[5] After the events of Pearl Harbor and once the Federal Arts Project was abandoned, Gikow's murals were solely sought after by New York department stores wishing to commission wall paintings.

[2] In the same year she held her first solo exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City in which she displayed her experimental prints to a positive audience.

Due to this influence, she came to develop her more naturalistic style in which human figures are rendered with more detail, light sketchy lines, anatomically accurate proportions, and heavy, defining shading.