Dorothy Dehner
American, 1901 - 1994Dark Harmony, 1992
On view
Painted aluminum
Dimensions98 × 60 × 14 1/2 in.
Gift of Genevieve and Richard Shaw, by exchange, and partial gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2010.280
After studying at the University of California, Dorothy Dehner moved to New York to attend the Art Students League, where she met fellow artist and future husband, Abstract Expressionist sculptor David Smith. It was not until after 1952 that Dehner exhibited her works in a solo exhibition at the Rose Fried Gallery.
Dehner experimented with a variety of mediums with her sculptures. In 1955 she began to explore bronze and the casting process. By the mid-1970s Dehner began to experiment with wood, and by the early 1980s, created steel fabrications from bronze originals out of Cor-Ten steel. In her late work, like Dark Harmony, she used aluminum, which she then painted. Her sculptures were abstract works that referenced the visual world with horizontal pieces viewed as landscapes and vertical works evocative of totems.
