Dorothea Foster Black (23 December 1891 – 13 September 1951) was an Australian painter and printmaker of the Modernist school, known for being a pioneer of Modernism in Australia.

[3] Dorrit Black was born in the Adelaide suburb of Burnside, the daughter of engineer and architect Alfred Barham Black and Jessie Howard Clark, an amateur artist and daughter of John Howard Clark, editor of the South Australian Register.

[1] In 1927, Black went by herself to London and attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where she experimented with colour linocut printing while studying under Claude Flight.

[2] Black was strongly influenced by the Modernist and Cubist art movements she was exposed to in London and Paris.

[8] Over the next few years, the Modern Art Centre became a "source of inspiration and opening to a wider vision" to artists such as Nancy Hall.

[9] The making of linocuts allowed Black to abstract her subjects by eliminating detail and emphasising structure.

[4] Dorrit Black died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital on 13 September 1951, at the age of 59, after a car accident.

She has so consistently been artistically cold-shouldered and ignored since her return here about 20 years ago that it is amazing how she maintained the courage to fight on against so much prejudice and misunderstanding.

Regarded as not sufficiently "advanced" by one section, and too "modern" by the other, it will be many years before her exceptional talent can be properly appreciated in its right perspective, as it most certainly will be.