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Dorr Bothwell Paintings

American, 1902-2000

Doris Hodgson Bothwell, known as Dorr Bothwell, was born in San Francisco, in 1902. The Bothwell family moved to San Diego in 1911, where they became friends and neighbors with the artists Anna and Albert Valentien. 

Bothwell began her art studies with Anna in 1916 at the age of 14. In the early 1920s, Bothwell returned to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts, then studied at the University of Oregon in Eugene and the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, in 1926. Returning to San Diego in 1931, Bothwell became involved, once more, with the San Diego art community and exhibited with the San Diego Moderns. 

In 1934, Bothwell was in Los Angeles and there she joined the post-Surrealist circle of Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg, finding some parallels between their post-Surrealist concepts and her own work. She attended classes conducted by Feitelson as part of the Public Works of Art Project from 1933–34 and eventually joined the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project as a painter in the mural division. She produced several murals for the WPA. 

In the 1940s and ‘50s, Bothwell taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. She died on September 24, 2000, in Fort Bragg, California.

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(Biography provided by Stevens Fine Art)

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Artist: Dorr Bothwell
Orange Grove Landscape
By Dorr Bothwell
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Orange Grove Landscape, 1941, gouache on illustration board, 14 inches x 18 inches (image), 22 x 26 inches (framed) signed and dated lower right, newly framed with museum glazing ...
Category

1940s American Modern Dorr Bothwell Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Board

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This is a gouache or watercolor painting. signed and dated. it depicts poppies and some other wildflowers.. Dorr Hodgson Bothwell (May 3, 1902 – September 24, 2000) was an American artist, designer, educator, and world-traveller. She was born in San Francisco, California. She began her art career at the California School of Fine Arts in 1921, under the tutelage of Gottardo Piazzoni and Rudolph Schaeffer. Bothwell's travels began in 1928, after her father died. She spent 1928 and 1929 living and working in Samoa, then spent another two years in Europe before resettling in San Diego in 1932, where she married her childhood friend, sculptor Donal Hord. Separating from Hord, she moved to Los Angeles in 1934, joining the post-surrealist group around Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg, and participating in the mural division of the Federal Arts Project, (WPA) where she learned the art of screenprinting, which would become her favored graphic technique. She returned to San Francisco in 1942. She traveled to Paris in 1949/51, to Africa in 1966/67, to England, France and the Netherlands in 1970, to Bali, Java and Sumatra in 1974, and to China and Japan in 1982/85. In 1968, Dorr Bothwell and Marlys Mayfield wrote Notan – on the Interaction of Positive and Negative Spaces. It was first reissued in 1976, and the first Danish translation was published in 1977. In 1991 the book was republished by Dover Publications as Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design; it has been in print continuously since then. Bothwell taught at the San Francisco Art Institute for many years where she focused closely on theories of color. She taught as an instructor of design at the CSFA from 1944-48 and 1953-58, Parsons School Design in New York in 1952, after which she further studied in Paris. She returned to the states and taught at the SFAI from 1959-61, Mendocino Art Center from 1961-97, and Ansel Adams Photography Workshop in Yosemite National Park from 1964-78. Artists Robert Hudson...
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