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Dorothy DehnerBicep1954
1954
$18,500
£13,818.61
€16,020.48
CA$25,686.79
A$28,791.58
CHF 14,990.93
MX$351,557.54
NOK 190,330.37
SEK 180,416.07
DKK 119,530.13
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About the Item
Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994) was an influential American artist who worked with drawing, painting, printmaking, and most notably sculpture.
Dehner's legacy has been overshadowed by her ex-husband, the acclaimed sculptor David Smith, for many years. Stifled by their tumultuous relationship, Dehner would only fully commit to her practice after divorcing him in 1951. This break was highly fruitful for her artistic output and reputation in the following years.
After the divorce, Dehner refined her artistic voice and expanded her practice to include printmaking and sculpture. Her new-found independence and renewed ambition led to a pivotal relationship with the esteemed printmaking studio Atelier 17. Working there she formed a close and enduring friendship with Louise Nevelson.
Today Dehner has been re-embraced and repositioned in the American art canon. Her work is best understood and appreciated in the context of David Smith and other artists dedicated to sculpture including Lee Bontecou, Ruth Asawa, and of course Louise Nevelson.
This dynamic and impactful work on paper is a powerful example of Dehner's work from the 1950's. In this work Dehner is leaning into gestural and subconscious actions that defined abstract expressionism. While it is notably looser and bolder then some of the drawings we expect from this period, we find the artist creating forms that are a harbinger of the muscular sculpture she would create in a few years. Click here to see a bronze sculpture from 1964 in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Dehner had a strict palette and used color judiciously and sparingly. Like many of her creations from the 1950's, the structures or dominant forms are rendered in graphite or ink and they are highlighted, illuminated, or here in this work both shadowed or embellished with an energetic addition of terracotta.
From 1948 until her passing in 1994, Dehner had over 50 solo exhibitions and completed numerous public commissions for prestigious organizations such as New York Medical College, Rockefeller Center, and the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation.
To learn more about Dorothy Dehner's works on paper, we recommend exploring the online holdings of her work at the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.) and the MoMA (NYC).
Questions about this piece? Contact us.
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“Untitled” (aka "Bicep")
USA, 1954
Ink and watercolor on paper
Signed and dated lower left
19.75"H 26"W (work)
24.25"H 30.25"W (framed)
Framed with museum glass
Very good condition
- Creator:Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994, American)
- Creation Year:1954
- Dimensions:Height: 19.75 in (50.17 cm)Width: 26 in (66.04 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Very good condition.
- Gallery Location:Toronto, CA
- Reference Number:Seller: 03-251stDibs: LU215215941532
Dorothy Dehner
Dorothy Dehner was one of the important women artists in the United States in the mid-century American abstraction movement (the Museum of Modern Art in New York has more than a dozen of her works in its collection). Unfortunately, she has been overshadowed by the titanic presence of David Smith (the most important sculptor of the Abstract Expressionist period), whom she married when they were both young artists experimenting with abstraction in the 30s. Though she, too, devoted an amount of time making sculpture, she was the more talented painter of the two (they separated in the 40s, allegedly due to Smith's feelings of competition with Dehner). Her pen and ink and watercolor works are the most moving, expressive and original of her creations. When the Museum of Modern Art decided to buy one of her works for its permanent collection in 1953, it was one of these watercolors it chose. The Jewish Museum and Cleveland Museum of Art have held major retrospectives of Dehner's work. In 1993, the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of Dehner's watercolors from this same period. Her work is also in the British Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, Phillips Collection (Washington D. C.), Philadelphia Museum of Art and Museum of American Art, among others.
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Dehner's legacy has been overshadowed for many years by her ex-husband, the acclaimed sculptor David Smith. Stifled by their tumultuous relationship, Dehner only fully committed to her practice after divorcing him in 1951. This break was highly fruitful for her artistic output and reputation in the following years.
After the divorce, Dehner refined her artistic voice and expanded her practice to include printmaking and sculpture. Her new-found independence and renewed ambition led to a pivotal relationship with the esteemed printmaking studio Atelier 17. Working there she formed a close and enduring friendship with Louise Nevelson.
Today Dehner has been re-embraced and repositioned in the American art canon. Her work is best understood and appreciated in the context of not only David Smith but other artists dedicated to sculpture including Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, and of course Louise Nevelson.
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