Gallery — Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts

Gallery

Selected Works

Dorothy Dehner's work in sculpture, printmaking, drawing, and painting spans six decades. The galleries below display a representative selection from her early figurative paintings through the totemic bronze sculpture for which she is best known.

Sculpture

Bronze, Welded, and Wooden Forms

Dehner came to sculpture in mid-life and made it the center of her practice, developing a language of stacked, totemic, welded and cast-bronze forms drawn from myth, memory, and the natural world.

Looking North, 1964 — *Looking North*, 1964

Encounter, 1969 — collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York — *Encounter*, 1969
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Demeter's Harrow, 1990 — *Demeter's Harrow*, 1990

Dark Harmony, 1992 — *Dark Harmony*, 1992

Big Rooster, c. 1974 — wood — *Big Rooster*, c. 1974
Wood

Untitled (I Ching), 1975 — *Untitled (I Ching)*, 1975

Three Circles Open, 1984 — *Three Circles Open*, 1984

Aspect of the City, 1986 — *Aspect of the City*, 1986

Tall City #1, 1986 — *Tall City #1*, 1986

Drawings

Works on Paper

Dehner worked on paper throughout her career, developing visual ideas that often anticipated her sculpture. The works here span four decades, from the Bolton Landing years through her late New York period.

Bolton Landscape, 1945 — *Bolton Landscape*, 1945

From Dances of Death, 1946 — *From Dances of Death*, 1946

Gigue, Suite Moderne, 1948 — *Gigue, Suite Moderne*, 1948

New York City, 1953 — *New York City*, 1953

Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1986 — *Santa Fe, New Mexico*, 1986

Dark Harmony, 1983 — *Dark Harmony*, 1983

Prints

Printmaking

Dehner's printmaking practice encompassed two significant bodies of work: etchings made at Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter's influential workshop in New York, where she studied in the early 1950s; and lithographs produced at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, one of the foremost centers for fine-art lithography in the United States.

The Barn at Bolton, 1952 — etching — *The Barn at Bolton*, 1952
Etching · Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bird Machine No. 1, 1952 — etching — *Bird Machine No. 1*, 1952

Embryi, 1953 — etching, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — *Embryi*, 1953
Etching · Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bird Machine #2, 1953 — etching — *Bird Machine #2*, 1953
Etching · Metropolitan Museum of Art

Monteblanks with Charms, 1955 — print — *Monteblanks with Charms*, 1955

Figure in Landscape, 1958 — engraving — *Figure in Landscape*, 1958

River Landscape No. 1, 1958 — engraving — *River Landscape No. 1*, 1958
Engraving · Brooklyn Museum

The Maiden Aunts, 1958 — print — *The Maiden Aunts*, 1958

Heads No. 3, 1970 — print — *Heads No. 3*, 1970

Lunar Series 1, 1970–71 — lithograph, Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College — *Lunar Series 1*, 1970–71
Lithograph · Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College

Lunar Series 3, 1970–71 — lithograph — *Lunar Series 3*, 1970–71
Lithograph

Town and Country, 1971 — print — *Town and Country*, 1971

Paintings

Early Paintings

Before turning to sculpture, Dehner worked as a painter, engaging the currents of American modernism from the Social Realism of the 1930s through the surrealist-inflected figure paintings of the 1940s.

Portrait of Wilhelmina Weber Furlong, 1931 — *Portrait of Wilhelmina Weber Furlong*, 1931
Oil on canvas, 28 × 22 in.

Virgin Island Still Life, 1932 — *Virgin Island Still Life*, 1932
Oil on canvas, 18 × 24 in.

Still Life with Doll Head, c. 1930s — *Still Life with Doll Head*, c. 1930s

Cooling Off in Schenectady, 1943 — *Cooling Off in Schenectady*, 1943

Still Life with Shells, 1931 — collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — *Still Life with Shells*, 1931
Metropolitan Museum of Art