Dorothy Dehner
Cora aroused Dehner's curiosity about foreign culture with extravagant tales of her travels abroad.
[6] In 1922, she pursued studies in theater at the University of California Los Angeles, but dropped out after one year to explore a stage career in New York.
[8] Upon her return to the United States, Dehner enrolled at the Art Students League and briefly studied sculpture.
However, she found the teaching methods overly conventional and ended up setting sculpture aside and focusing on drawing, under the instruction of Jan Matulka, Kenneth Hayes Miller, John Graham and Kimon Nicolaides.
[11] Smith and Dehner bought a farm in Bolton Landing in upstate New York in 1929 and spent much of their married life there.
However, as a result of some family land holdings, Dehner received an annual check for $2,000, which helped support them financially and allowed Smith to focus on his art.
[9] Her subject matter consisted of mostly natural forms, such as shells and aquatic life, while her style remained heavily cubist.
[15] Following their stay in Paris, in which they were immersed in avant-garde art, particularly in influences of Surrealism and Cubism, Dehner and Smith toured Greece.
[18] Despite their avant-garde influences, works of Dehner during this period reflect a focus on naturalism and a desire to depict direct observations.
[28] Although the messages of her Life on the Farm series may not be crystal clear, it was evident that during the late 1940s, Dehner underwent serious mental turmoil.
Following this well-received exhibition, she read Ernst Haeckel's Kunst formen der Nature, a book of biological prints, and proceeded to incorporate these organismal forms into her artwork.
[32] Despite the dramatic ups and downs of their marriage, the twenty three years Dehner spent with Smith contributed to the formation of her own distinct style.
[33] Following her divorce from Smith, Dehner earned a degree from Skidmore and began teaching at Barnard College, among other schools.
Although an extremely busy and stressful time for Dehner, the two years following her divorce proved vital to her career for she finally felt free to pursue her artistic passions.
Over the next twenty years her reputation as a sculptor would skyrocket and she would hold exhibitions at the prestigious Willard Gallery in 1957, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1970, and 1973.
[41] Dehner's sculptures emphasized line and plane over volume and exhibited an assembled as opposed to modeled quality.
[40] Despite being abstract, her sculptures are constantly reminiscent of the natural world, invoking both totemic presences and references to the assumption of a landscape.
[4] In 1988 Dehner had solo exhibitions featuring her large welded pieces at Twining Fine Art, New York, and at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
By 1990, however, Dehner was working with fabricators who helped transform some of her earlier drawings into sculptures such as the painted aluminium wall piece.
[48] After a prominent career in art, Dehner was found dead in a stairwell outside her apartment in Manhattan on September 22, 1994, at the age of ninety-two.
