BIOGRAPHY
DOROTHY DEHNER (1901-1994)
After studying at the University of California, Los Angeles (1921-22), Dehner moved to New York, and in 1925, after a trip to Europe that included six months in Italy, Switzerland, and Paris, and stimulated by European modernism, Dehner enrolled in New York’s Art Students League. In 1927, Dehner married the artist David Smith; both had studied painting with Jan Matulka at the Art. In 1935, a trip to Paris, Brussels, London, Greece and the Soviet Union had a lasting impact on Dehner’s art. Both Dehner and Smith were inspired by the same images: the skeleton of a prehistoric bird from the American Museum of Natural History was the basis for Dehner’s drawing Bird of Peace (1946; private collection) and Smith’s Royal Bird (1947-48 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota). For both artists the prehistoric creature became a menacing predator, which can be related to their views about war and the destruction caused by World War II. For Dehner, however, Bird of Peace held personal associations; the spectral presence of the skeletal creature and the barren, jagged peaks below it alluded to the anguish of her private life at Bolton Landing, New York.
Dehner found a copy of Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (1904), a seminal study of natural forms, and embarked on a series of drawings of microscopic forms, creating abstractions in gouache and ink. Dehner introduced a range of biomorphic forms that were related to works by such artists as Paul Klee, Joan Miro, and Mark Rothko. Unlike the Surrealists, Dehner did not emphasize the disquieting aspects of her imagery, but celebrated the animate energy of these unicellular forms of life (e.g. untitled drawing from the Virgin Island Series, 1948; Cleveland, Ohio, Museum of Art). In 1950, Dehner left Bolton Landing and was divorced from Smith two years later. She studied at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York (1950-52), and after graduating she moved to New York City where she taught at various schools and studied engraving at S. W. Hayter’s Atelier 17. In 1952 she had her first solo exhibition at the Rose Fried Gallery, and in 1955 she began experimenting with casting bronze at the Sculpture Center. Dehner’s sculpture emphasized contour, rather than mass. She assembled her works of disparate parts and approached the use of wax as a Constructivist–favoring planar elements. In the 1960s she drew on wax slabs and introduced other textures by adding small pieces of metal.
While Dehner’s sculptures are abstract, they consistently make reference to the natural world. Vertical compositions invoke a totemic presence, while the horizontal format can be viewed as a landscape. Encounter (1969, Kraushaar Galleries, New York), a work consisting of six separate sculptures, alludes to a meeting of people both in composition and in concept. The disparate totemic forms relate to one another as individuals of various sizes and proportions. Her abstract sculptures represent a personal iconography that recurs over the decades. Circles, moons, ellipses, wedges, and arcs abound. By the mid-1970s Dehner changed her medium from cast metal to wood. The architectonic structure of her wooden ensembles, with thrusting verticals or stacked elements, resemble the skyline of a fanciful city. In the early 1980s Dehner began a new sculpture series of heroic proportions in Cor-Ten and black painted steel. These powerful sculptures were fabricated and based on earlier works in bronze. In the 1990s Dehner worked with fabricators to transform some of her drawings into three-dimensional wall pieces such as The Stretcher Series. As with other artists of the New York school, Dehner’s art acknowledges that abstract symbols can communicate content that is private but with universal implications.
-Dorothy Dehner Foundation
Dehner's works can be found in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., among many others.
CV
Born, 1901, Cleveland, Ohio
1925, Art Students League
1952, BS, Skidmore College
1982, Honorary Doctorate, Skidmore College
Died, 1994, New York, NY
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Whyte Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1944.
Hawthorn Studio, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, 1948.
Rose Fried Gallery, New York, 1952.
Morris Gallery, New York, 1952.
Albany Institute of History and Art, New York, 1952.
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, 1955.
Wittenborn Gallery, New York, Dorothy Dehner, Etchings and Engravings, 1956.
Willard Gallery, New York, Dorothy Dehner, Sculpture and Watercolors, 1957.
Willard Gallery, New York, Dehner Bronzes, 1959.
Columbia University (Avery Hall), New York, Dorothy Dehner, A Selection of Bronzes, 1961.
Willard Gallery, New York, 1963.
Albany Institute of History and Art, New York, 1964.
The Jewish Museum, New York, Dorothy Dehner: Ten Years of Sculpture, 1965.
The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Dorothy Dehner, 1967.
Bernard M. Baruch Gallery, City University of New York, Dorothy Dehner, 1970.
Willard Gallery, New York, Dorothy Dehner, 1970.
Parsons-Dreyfus Gallery, New York, Dorothy Dehner, Sculpture and Drawings, 1979.
A.M. Sachs Gallery, New York, 1982.
Associated American Artists, New York, 1987.
Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Dorothy Dehner, Sculpture and Works on Paper, 1988.
Twining Fine Art, New York, Dorothy Dehner: Heroic Sculpture, 1990.
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., Dorothy Dehner, 1990.
Baruch College Art Gallery, City University of New York, Dorothy Dehner, 1991.
Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, Dorothy Dehner, 1992.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Dorothy Dehner: Drawings, Prints, Sculpture, 1995.
Kraushaar Galleries, Inc., New York, Dorothy Dehner/The 1970s, 2005.
Kraushaar Galleries, Inc., New York, Dorothy Dehner/The Intimate Gesture: A Selection of Drawings and Prints from the 1950s, 2011.
Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, Dorothy Dehner: Compositions and Constructions, 2015.
Rosenberg & Co., New York, Dorothy Dehner, 2021.
Berry Campbell, New York, 2024.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 1942.
San Francisco Museum of Art, California, 1942.
Albany Institute of History and Art, New York, 1943.
Albany Institute of History and Art, New York, 9th Annual Exhibit, Artists of the Upper Hudson, 1944.
Audubon Artists, New York, 1946.
Whitney Museum, New York, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture, Watercolors, and Drawings, 1951.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Posters by Painters and Sculptors, 1952.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Painting and Sculpture Acquisitions, 1953.
Willard Gallery, New York, Watercolors, 1955.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, International Watercolor Exhibition, 18th Biennial, 1955.
Willard Gallery, New York, 1956.
Stable Gallery, New York, Fifth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1956.
Museum of Modern Art, Drawings Recently Acquired for the Museum Collection, 1957.
Willard Gallery, New York, Sculpture, Various Times and Various Cultures, 1957.
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, 1957.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Trends in Watercolor Today, 1957.
Riverside Museum, New York, Directions in Sculpture, 1957.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Recent Sculpture U.S.A., 1959.
Riverside Museum, New York, Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, Eighteenth Annual Exhibition, 1959.
Stable Gallery, New York, New Sculpture Group, 1959.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Recent Acquisitions, 1959-1960.
Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, Aspects de la Sculpture Americaine, 1960.
Stable Gallery, New York, New Sculpture Group, Fifth Exhibition, 1960.
Museum of American Art, Annual Exhibition, Contemporary Sculpture and Drawing, Whitney 1960-1961.
Holland-Goldowsky, Chicago, New Sculpture Group, 1961.
Rome-New York Art Foundation, Inc., Rome, The Quest and the Quarry, 1961.
Stable Gallery, New York, New Sculpture Group, Sixth Exhibition, 1961.
Riverside Museum, New York, Twelve New York Sculptors, 1962.
The Waddington Galleries, London, Small Sculpture: Robert Adams, Dorothy Dehner, Elizabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth, 1962.
American Federation of Arts, New York, New Directions, Sculpture, October 1962-1963 (traveled throughout the United States).
Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, Inc., New York, 22nd Annual Exhibition, 1963.
Sculptors Guild Exhibition, New York, 1963.
Sculptors Guild Exhibition, New York, 1964.
Riverside Museum, New York, Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, Twenty-third Annual Exhibition, 1964.
Triennale de Milano, Palazzo dell’Arte Parco Sempione Milano, 1964.
The Sculptors Guild, New York, Landscape in Abstraction, 1967.
Sculptors Guild Exhibition, New York, 1967.
National Association of Women Artists, Annual Exhibition, New York, 1970.
Sculptors Guild Exhibition, New York, 1972.
Sculptors Guild Exhibition, New York, 1973.
Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, 1973.
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York, 1976.
The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Artists of Lake George, 1776-1976, 1976.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, Modern Masters: Women of the First Generation, Women Artists Series at Douglass College, 1982.
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Dorothy Dehner and David Smith: Their Decades of Search and Fulfillment, 1984.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, American Prints: 1900-1960; Recent Acquisitions: Illustrated Books, 1985-1986.
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Standing Ground: Sculpture by American Women, 1987.
New York Studio School, The New Sculpture Group, A Look Back: 1957-1962, 1988.
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., John Graham: Artist and Avatar, 1988 (also shown at Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase; Newport Harbor Art Museum, California, and University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley, and Smart Gallery, University of Chicago).
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, New York, Centennial Exhibition, National Association of Women Artists, 1988.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Enduring Creativity, 1988.
Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee, and Queensborough Community College, New York, American Women of the Twentieth Century, 1989.
Baruch College Art Gallery, City University of New York, Paths to Discovery: The New York School, 1992.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Adding It Up: Print Acquisitions 1970-1995, 1995.
Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York, Women and Abstract Expressionism, 1997.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Giacometti to Judd: Prints by Sculptors, 1998.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abstract Expressionist New York: Rock Paper Scissors, 2010-2011.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abstract Expressionist New York: The Big Picture, 2010-2011.
The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Five Decades of Collecting 1963-2013, 2013.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, 2017.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Degree Zero: Drawing at Midcentury, 2020-2021.
Southampton Arts Center, New York, Heroines of the Abstract Expressionist Era: From the New York School to The Hamptons, 2023.
Berry Campbell, New York, Perseverance, 2024.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Revolutions: Art from Hirshhorn Collection, 1860-1960, 2024.z
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Adirondack Museum, Lake Pleasant, New York
AT&T Headquarters, Basking Ridge, New Jersey
The British Museum, London, United Kingdom
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
The Columbus Museum, Georgia
Denver Art Museum, Colorado
Dresden Museum, Germany
Executive Mansion, Albany, New York
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York
The Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York
Jewett Art Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul
Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins, France
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art, Utica, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburgh, Florida
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas
National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
Indianapolis Museum of Art Galleries at Newfields, Indiana
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
Seattle Art Museum, Washington
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, California
Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York
Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia
University Art Museum, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas
The William Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, Storrs, Connecticut
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick