DOROTHY DEHNER, THE CREATIVE PROCESS, 1930 - 1950, is a selection of works on paper that explores Dehner’s artistic development. The exhibition focuses on drawings and watercolors created during the formative years of Abstract Expressionism. The show opens February 24th and continues through April 10th, 2015.
Better known for her bronze and wood sculptures, throughout her life Dorothy Dehner (1901 – 1994) worked on paper. In 1991, the artist said, “I love to draw. It is very basic in all of my work, I think.”
THE CREATIVE PROCESS explores the personal and experimental yet vital and bold nature of Dehner’s early years as an artist. Her visual vocabulary has diverse influences ranging from her experience as a serious dancer to the freedom and personal autonomy of the emerging abstract movement. This was further reinforced by her exposure to the European avant-garde during a 1925 trip to Paris, her study with Jan Matulka, and her friendship with John Graham. These sources combined to produce works that fuse aspects of cubism, surrealist abstraction and gestural elements. Landscapes made during the early years of her marriage to David Smith record the topography of their life in Bolton Landing, New York City and the Virgin Islands. Sea forms, including shells and fish, are a recurring subject. Marital struggles are documented in symbolic and at times surreal iconography.
Dehner and her art resist any intrusions of dogma, and the freedom of the Abstract Expressionist prevails…. Her mysterious and resplendent meditations of line on paper represent the culminate resolution of her art.
(Excerpted from Dorothy Dehner: Poetry of Line, A Retrospective of Work on Paper, Boulder Art Center, Colorado, 1994)
Dorothy Dehner’s work is in the collection of museums around the country including the National Gallery of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Arkansas Arts Center, The Columbus Museum (Georgia), Cleveland Museum of Art, Palmer Museum of Art, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Block Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Museum.
The Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts is represented exclusively by Kraushaar Galleries, New York. Kraushaar Galleries is celebrating its 130th year in business.
