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16 DOROTHY DEHNER
The People on the Bridge
.
Engraving, 1959. 249x354 mm; 9
3
/
4
x13
3
/
4
inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and
numbered 11/35 in pencil, lower margin. A superb, richly-inked impression of this very
scarce engraving.
Dehner (1901-1994) initially came to NewYork by way of California, to pursue acting
and dance, which she studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. She enrolled at
the American Academy of Art in NewYork, but her travels in 1925 throughout Europe,
where she was introduced to works by Picasso and Matisse, convinced her to change
course and pursue a career as an artist.
She studied for several years at the Art Students League and there met the American
modernist sculptor David Smith (see lots 14 and 15), whom she married in 1940. She
explored more progressive art forms similar to Smith’s interests, adhering to abstract and
cubist tendencies rather than representational imagery.
The couple moved to Bolton Landing, in upstate NewYork, where, gradually Dehner’s art
became secondary to her duties as a wife (her painting series
Life on the Farm
and a group
of black ink drawings she called the
Damnation Series
, mid-1940s, serves as a psychological
reflection of the mundanity of her life then).Their marriage was deteriorating at Bolton
Landing; they separated in 1950 and divorced a year later. Subsequently, Dehner fully
resumed her career as an artist, studying printmaking at Atelier 17 and returning to
painting and sculpture with renewed creative energy.
[1,500/2,500]