Edition 35, Teller 8. Signed, dated, titled and numbered '12/35' in pencil.
A fine impression, on off-white, wove paper, with full margins (2 1/2 to 3 1/8 inches), in excellent condition.
Dehner printed this work as 'Bird Machine No. 1', then turning the image 180° editioned the work as 'Bird Machine No.2' thereby demonstrating the integrity and versatility of the abstract composition.
Reproduced: 'The women of Atelier 17, Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York'; Christina Weyl, Yale University Press, 2019, Figure 72.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Painter, sculptor, and printmaker Dorothy Dehner was born in Cleveland, Ohio. After living in California for a period, she moved to New York City in the mid-1920s, where she studied at the Art Students League. She met artist David Smith, and they married in 1927 and took up residence in Brooklyn.
In 1929, Smith bought an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Bolton Landing, upstate New York, where the couple spent summers before moving there full time in 1940. During their marriage, Dehner ran the household and assisted Smith with his sculptures. She continued to pursue her art passionately and participate in group shows, but her interests were considered secondary to those of her husband, who could be demanding and overbearing. Her work of the late 1940s such as her "Damnation Series" and "Dances of Death” reflected the mental turmoil she was undergoing in her marriage.
In 1951, Dehner divorced Smith, left Bolton Landing, and moved back to New York City. She studied printmaking at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, where she met sculptors Louise Nevelson and David Slivka. In 1953, her work was included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 1955, Dehner made her first sculpture, demonstrating an innate aptitude for the medium. Her work rapidly gained recognition; in 1955, she had a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1957, she joined the prestigious Willard Gallery in New York.
She remained prolific until a pharmacist’s error rendered her blind shortly before her death. Dehner was a visiting artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1970-1971. In 1981, Skidmore College gave her an honorary doctorate, and the following year, she received an award from the Women’s Caucus for Art. She was also the subject of major retrospectives at the Jewish Museum in New York (1965), City University of New York (1991), the Katonah Museum of Art (1993), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (1995).
