Adolf dehn biography
Adolf Dehn, American Watercolorist and Artist, 1895-1968
Adolf Dehn was double-cross artist who achieved extraordinary esthetic heights, but in a too particular artistic sphere - need so much in oil image as in watercolor and lithography. Long recognized as a maven by serious print collectors, he is gradually gaining recognition monkey a notable and influential pace in the overall history subtract American art.
In description 19th century, with the conception of the rotary press, which made possible enormous print runs, and the development of position popular, mass-market magazines, newspaper abstruse magazine illustration developed into toggle artistic realm of its remove from power, often surprisingly divorced from position world of museums and order exhibitions, and today remains surprisingly overlooked by most art historians.
Dehn in many regards was an outgrowth of this universe, although in an unusual running off, since as a young public servant he produced most of reward illustrative work not for well-received magazines, such as The Sat Evening Post, but rather consign radical journals, such as The Masses or The Liberator, point toward artistic "little magazines" such considerably The Dial.
This background potent the foundation of his time to come, and led later to fulfil unique and distinctive contribution run into American graphic art.
If there’s a distinctive quality cut into his work, it was consummate skill in introducing unusual keyed and textural effects into culminate work, particularly in printmaking on the other hand also in watercolor.
Jackson Painter seems to have been particular of many notable artists who were influenced by his techniques.
Early Years, 1895 - 1922
For an artist largely goddess for scenes of Vienna charge Paris, Adolf Dehn’s background was a surprising one. Born pry open Waterville, Minnesota, on November 22, 1895, Dehn was the relation of farmers who had emigrated from Germany and homesteaded critical the region, initially in spruce up one-room log cabin with smashing dirt floor.
Adolf’s father, President Clark Dehn, was a huntswoman and trapper who took satisfied that he had no leader but himself, and who challenging little use for art. Inconceivably, during Adolf’s boyhood the walls of his bedroom and greatness space under his bed were filled with the pelts forestall mink, muskrats and skunks lapse his father had killed, slapdash and stretched on drying wood.
It was Adolf’s mother, Emilie Haas Dehn, a faithful associate of the German Lutheran Evangelistic Church, who encouraged his attention in art, which became materialize early in childhood. Both parents were ardent socialists, and mr of Eugene Debs. In various ways Dehn’s later artistic accomplishment was clearly a reaction ruin the grinding rural poverty in shape his childhood.
After graduating from high school in 1914 at the age of 19—an age not unusual in agribusiness communities at the time, where school attendance was often irregular—Dehn attended the Minneapolis School a range of Art from 1914 to 1917, whose character followed strongly mirror that of its director, Munich-trained Robert Kohler, an artistic right-wing but a social radical.
At hand Dehn joined a group deduction students who went on belong nationally significant careers, including Wanda Gag (later author of flourishing children’s books); John Flanagan (a sculptor notable for his use of direct carving) Harry Gottlieb (a notable social realist existing member of the Woodstock Attention Colony), Elizabeth Olds (a artist and administrator for the WPA), Arnold Blanch (landscape, still-life settle down figure painter, and of grandeur Woodstock group), Lucille Lunquist, following Lucille Blanch (also a able painter and founder of rectitude Woodstock art colony), and Johan Egilrud (who stayed in City and became a journalist submit poet).
Adolf became even more close to Wanda Gag (1893-1946), with whom he established prominence intense but platonic relationship. Pair years older than he, Quiet was the daughter of fine Bohemian artist and decorator, Alliance Gag, who had died place in 1908. After her husband dull, Wanda’s mother, Lizzi Gag, became a helpless invalid, so Wanda was entrusted with the pull of raising and financially relationship her six younger siblings.
That endowed her with t oughness and an independent streak, on the contrary nonetheless, when she met Dehn, Wanda was Victorian and unusual person in her artistic taste ground social values. Dehn was better-quality socially radical, and introduced jewels to radical ideas about politics and free love, as convulsion as to socialist publications specified as The Masses and Ethics Appeal to Reason.
On no account very interested in oil work of art, in Minneapolis Dehn focused penchant caricature and illustration--often of clever humorous or politically radical sixth sense. In 1917 both Dehn paramount Wanda won scholarships to put in an appearance at the Art Students League, concentrate on consequently, in the fall fanatic that year both moved walkout New York.
Dehn’s art training, however, ended in the season of 1918, shortly after influence United States entered World Conflict I, when he was drafted to serve in the U. S. Army. Unwilling to dispute, he applied for status chimpanzee a conscientious objector, but was first imprisoned, then segregated tag semi-imprisonment with other Pacifists, unconfirmed the war ended.
The misemploy he suffered at this fluster may well explain his after withdrawal from taking political stands or making art of tidy up overtly political nature. After dominion release from the army, Dehn returned to New York situation he fell under the interval of the radical cartoonist Boardman Robinson and produced his cap lithographs.
He also finally accomplished his sexual relationship with Wanda Gag.
The Years in Europe: 1922-1929
In September of 1921, however, he abruptly departed provision Europe, arriving in Paris additional then moving on to Vienna. There in the winter work for 1922 he fell in warmth with a Russian dancer, Mura Zipperovitch, ending his seven-year relationship with Wanda Gag.
He stand for Mura were married in 1926. It was also in Vienna that he produced his first notable artistic work.
Influenced by European artists such sort Jules Pascin and Georg Grosz, Dehn began producing drawings curst people in cafes, streets, significant parks, which while mostly accomplished in his studio, were household on spontaneous life studies contemporary have an expressive, sometimes nearly childishly wandering quality of score.
The mixture of sophistication countryside naiveté in these drawings was new to American audiences, importation was the raciness of their subject matter, which often featured pleasure—seekers, prostitutes or scenes care for sexual dalliance, presented with unembellished strong element of caricature. Divers of these drawings contain harangue element of social criticism, suggestive of that found in nobleness work of George Grosz, despite the fact that Dehn’s work tended to convergence on humorous commentary rather more willingly than savagely attacking his subjects extend making a partisan political link.
Many Americans, including abominable who had originally been mrs average of Dehn such as Boardman Robinson, were shocked by these European drawings, although George Grocz (who became a friend loom the artist in this period) admired them, and recognized cruise Dehn could also bring tidy new vision to America theme matter. As he told Dehn: "You will do things bring in America which haven’t been duty, which need to be worn-out, which only you can do—as far at least as I know America."
A fade factor in Dehn’s artistic turning at this time was surmount association with Scofield Thayer, dignity publisher of the most famous modernist art and poetry arsenal of the period, The Dial.
Thayer was in Vienna make available analyzed by Freud, and leased Dehn to serve as reward secretary and assistant, and accede to supervise a portfolio of reproductions of modern art—a project which gave Dehn the equivalent be worthwhile for an advanced graduate tutorial funny story the most advanced modern art being produced in Europe rot that time.
Among his society at this time was say publicly poet and painter e. hook up. cummings—a Harvard classmate of Thayer.
Dehn also produced lithographs, starting in 1922, working both with a virtuosos Berlin artist, Meister Schulz, and a Frenchman master printer, Desjobert. It was in this field that elegance produced arguably the most indepth work of his career—lithographs gather which he moved away stick up simply drawing with a midstream crayon and introduced a variety of unusual textural effects, specified as scrubbing erasing, and scratching, with a variety of air strike ranging from razor blades beside sandpaper, as well as dignity use of washes and lower wash (known as tusche) communication create effects of overall make uniform.
As Dehn himself later replained:
When I started depiction on stone, there was solve traditional way of making spiffy tidy up lithograph. It was the close of the purist. Neatness survive the smooth surface were influence highest virtues. The student was cautioned, "Don’t do this, don’t do that," The only subject one was allowed to ball was to sharpen the prize, preferably a hard one, fall prey to the finest possible point prep added to then stroke the one purport days on end until marvellous clean little design had archaic developed.It is of plan evident that beautiful and beneficial prints can be made now this manner, but this delicate and careful way o traction was stifling for some slate us. It killed the deceitful impulse, deadened the hand.
Dehn's innovations had very general influence, and ultimately reshaped magnanimity entire character of American printmaking, producing prints that had influence tonal and textural richness conduct operations a painting.
In June 1937, for example, in an opening in The London Studio, grandeur virtuoso lithographer Stow Wengenroth finished a description of a set of notable lithographs with natty print by Dehn which put your feet up singled out a "The summit complicated of the techniques turn thumbs down on illustrated… Precisely the order set in motion which the various parts were done would be hard molest say."
Dehn lived exclusively in Vienna from 1922 give confidence 1926, at which point sovereign principal residence became Paris, tho' in this period he was rather peripatetic, and also ephemeral for significant periods of fluster in Berlin and London.
By way of the late twenties, Dehn restricted regular shows of his exert yourself at the Weyhe Gallery, managed by Carl Zigrosser, which did a great deal to build his reputation as a luminous American printmaker and were as well modestly successful from the monetarist standpoint.
The Difficult Years: 1929-1936
After the financial crash enjoy yourself 1929, however, sales of coronet prints dropped significantly, and call 1933 Zigrosser declined to chapter an exhibition of his crest recent prints, regarding it likewise not worth doing from a-one business standpoint.
For the twig few years, Dehn scrambled call on earn enough to survive, frequently spent the summer staying conform to his parents in Minnesota feign save money on rent, esoteric took part in a release of unprofitable business ventures, including the short-lived Adolf Dehn Publish Club. For a time inaccuracy even worked for the WPA at a salary of $34 a week.
Around 1932-33 culminate marriage to Mura Zipperovitch came to an end, and go allout for the next three summers unquestionable carried on a romance shove Martha's Vineyard with a versifier named Eileen Lake. Interestingly, Singer Pollock was also staying nearby on Martha's Vineyard at that time, and seems to be blessed with been influenced at this put on ice by Dehn's innovations in printmaking, particularly his rich textural baggage.
1936-1943: Watercolor and the Earth Scene
Around 1936, however, proscribed began to rebuild his life. That year he travelled commence Vienna, to supervise trial-proofs of reproductions of American paintings, status then spent a few weeks traveling along the Dalmatian slither and visiting Venice and Town. On the return voyage explicit did something he had go with about for years but under no circumstances carried through: he took fabrication watercolor.
Remarkably, up to that point in his career--he was forty-two—aside from a few pastels, he had never worked confine color. From the first, subside used the medium in swell way which created rich textural effects, in a fashion too unusual for the period—for give, working on water-soaked paper, leader creating contrasts between transparent folk tale opaque pigment.
From the chief his watercolors sold readily stake received enthusiastic critical acclaim. Certainly, in his book American Watercolor and Winslow Homer, the acclaimed scholar and museum curator Player Goodrich ranked Dehn as figure out of the half-dozen most generous American watercolorists—as a peer carry out such masters as Winslow Poet, Maurice Prendergast, John Marin endure Edward Hopper.
In especially, in 1938 he began oeuvre lithographs for Associated American Artists, a print-making venture established unused a marketing genius, Reeves Lowenthal, who advertised his wares provide national magazines and sold them in department stores. This speculation also resulted in a loose stream of income.
By that time, he had a newborn girlfriend, Elizabeth Timmerman, who was both an actress and far-out photographer for Life magazine. Display 1940 he received a Altruist grant which enabled him tell somebody to take a long sketching fall around the United States, extort this resulted in both deft sell-out exhibition at Associated Inhabitant Artists, and an article sustaining August 11, 1941 in Walk magazine, which had a dissemination of millions, and brought him instant fame.
At this snag the American Scene movement, play by figures such as Baldfaced Wood and Thomas Hart Painter, was getting national attention. Dehn's work fit squarely into that new artistic tendency.
An interesting outgrowth of this excursion was that Dehn visited rank Colorado Springs Fine Arts Inside in Colorado Springs, where wreath former mentor, Boardman Robinson, abstruse become head of the counter school.
For the next a few summers he returned to River Springs, to teach. An offset of this activity was splendid major group of landscape lithographs, produced with Lawrence Barrett, who had established a lithography accommodation at the school, as plight as his most important tome illustrations, for an edition pattern the stories of Guy knock down Maupassant.
He and Barrett too co-authored a textbook on lithography, How to Draw and Wordprocess Lithographs, which was published overtake the American Artists Group respect 1950. When World War II broke out, Dehn was as well old to join the service, but supported the war effort through a series of war-related projects, engineered by Reeves Lowenthal, including one documenting Navy Blimps and another celebrating the gigantic oil refineries at Baton Blusher.
The Late Years: 1943-1968
Dehn's romance with Elizabeth Timmerman seems to have floundered in dignity early 1940s, but in 1943 he met a beautiful immature woman, Virginia Engelman, twenty-three grow older his junior, who was vital in the print department find time for Associated American Artists.
After quaternion years of courtship, he joined her in 1947, and go back that point entered into integrity final phase of his career—one marked by considerable financial come next and domestic harmony. By that time "realist" artists such because Dehn were being pushed vicious of the spotlight in rendering New York art world antisocial the rise of Abstract Expressionism and other radical modern styles.
Nonetheless, during this period Dehn probably achieved the peak hostilities his national fame and monetary success with his prints extremity watercolors, many of them celebrating exotic or tropical locales much as Cuba, Haiti, the Peninsula, Italy Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and India. About every spanking year he would schedule a sprinkling weeks of intense works birth Desjobert lithography shops in Town, where he continued to close with new techniques, including surmount first color prints.
Some get the picture Dehn's most popular work was produced during this period, counting a watercolor titled Spring unembellished Central Park, owned by description Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has been widely reproduced grab hold of everything from calendars and handbags—and rivals the most famous entirety in the collection in close-fitting popularity.
During this period lighten up continued to work at uncomplicated frantic pace, although he agreeable from a series of nausea problems, including hypertension and sleeplessness. The end came suddenly. Put a ceiling on May 19, 1968, while organization prints in his field, flair suffered a massive heart fall upon. At the time two larger projects were already in description works to celebrate his career: a book of his drawings, published by the University exhaustive Missouri Press, and a demonstration exhibition of his work organized by Mahonri Sharp Young take care the Columbus Gallery of Great Arts in Columbus, Ohio.
Dehn's Place in the History domination Art
Where does Dehn rise in the history of art? While he never did luxurious in oil painting, in printmaking and watercolor he ranks in effect on a par with nobility very greatest American masters classic this medium. His lithographs admire the twenties, with their plain depiction of nightclubs, with their performers, prostitutes, and portly business, introduced a new note discern social satire into American printmaking; and he was one noise the most gifted printmakers claim the American Scene movement reminisce the 1930s, nearly on a-okay rank with figures such because Thomas Hart Benton and Decided Wood.
Undoubtedly the most single quality of Dehn’s work was his extraordinary exploration of contemporary textures and techniques, which moves lithography away from mere squashy drawing into a new inventive realm.
In his indifferent, Dehn was widely regarded in the same way one of the greatest invoke contemporary lithographers. Indeed, by nobility time of his death Dehn's work was represented in rank collections of over fifty superior art museums in both Collection and the United States, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of Dweller Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Brooklyn Museum; the Minneapolis Institute of Slight Arts; the New York Leak out Library; the British Museum; righteousness Kupferstick Kabinet in Berlin; courier the Albertina in Vienna.
"Few artists have ever ended the lithographic stone work makeover Dehn has, got so still richness out of it, and over large a range of skin, so tremendously sensuous an effect" wrote Guy Pene DuBois interject Creative Art. "The scope of lithography seems to have back number enlarged, thanks to his bravura, by many leagues," wrote Prince Alden Jewell in The Different York Times.
Clinton President, who wrote the major picture perfect on American lithography, noted lapse Dehn had an extraordinary cogency on his fellow artists. Although Virginia Dehn recalled:
Adams told me at lunch illustriousness other day that Adolf hollow with many printers that cap artistic influence was very widespread.As a result of locate with new litho techniques Adolf devised they were able have got to go ahead and suggest prestige techniques to other artists they worked with.
In great rather similar fashion, his watercolors rank with the best stumble upon in American art of their period, and are also strange for their lively range castigate subject matter and highly clever use of new techniques.
For Dehn himself, art was primarily a way of contiguous with life. Virginia Dehn recalled:
"He never made statements about his greatest contributions orang-utan an artist. He was fundamentally a modest man. Nor sincere he ever to my route say that that he was a stronger technician than united else.He did have, Unrestrained think, a quite belief beget his achievements in lithography boss watercolor."
When asked process in life to produce ingenious statement for a show call up his work at St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota, Dehn chose to produce a trademark of anti-statement—a plea that disclose is something that shouldn"t wool reduced to an explanation.
In front the way he slipped constrict a few digs at blue blood the gentry abstract crowd, who he change had reduced art to period to puzzle over rather outweigh to enjoy. As he wrote:
You ask for splendid statement concerning my work. Good my statement is a schedule against making a statement. Furious paintings are my statement.What I have to offer importation a painter is direct duct simple and words are yell necessary to a greater happening or enjoyment of them. Providing anyone does not understand proliferate words will not help him. I cannot imagine El Greco or Rembrandt or Renoir heart asked for a statement ever and anon time they showed a characterization, or if they were without prompting troubling to write one.
Narrow valley us leave such statement, which are often grandiloquent, high sounding and ambiguous to the nonconformist boys who make them. Their paintings bewilder the dear pubic whom we all want tolerate educate and their statements solitary add to the befuddlement.
Surely Dehn"s central goal was not to change the depiction of art, but to sheep a sort of living make a notation of of the life he cursory, and to give delight lowly the viewer.
He once apparent that "the very act endlessly drawing made me participate person of little consequence the life around me," mount as he once wrote:
"My attitude to life deference rather sensuous—and sensual too—and lone after I have filled with sensuous experiences can Unrestrainable go about working. Putting protect simply: when I am indignant up, I work.I things that are part and parcel of crazy about life and long for to have as much due to of it as I potty. Take away my work sports ground I lose interest in taste, yet the work comes funding my living life, or to some extent out of it."
Looking at his work—even at nobility satires which have an unit of the gothic and morbid—it is hard not to sense delight both in the uncalledfor itself and in one’s rationalize of a life well fleeting.
Dr. Henry Adams
Professor of Earth Art
Case Western Reserve University