Self Portrait Oil on upson board 1932 27 x 21 inches (685 x 535mm) |
A MEMORIAL RETROSPECTIVE
January 20 to February 28,2001 |
Dorr Bothwell, a great American artist and national treasure, died September 24,2000 at the age of 98. The creativity, vision and joie de vivre in her art often reflects her worldwide travels - Samoa, the state of Washington, Panama, Europe, Africa, Los Angeles and finally San Francisco and the northern coast of California. She uses imagery, moods, colors and techniques evolved from the theories of her most influential teachers, Gottardo Piazzoni and Rudolf Schaeffer. In turn, she has taught generations of students throughout the United States with her book on Notan, theories of light and dark.
Screenprinting, learned while working with the 1930s Federal Arts Project in Los Angeles, became her chosen graphic technique as seen in Comment on Fashion and Blue Bones. Pensioners' Row, a 1926 pastel and an oil on canvas and Samoan Houses, oil on canvas, are evidence of her early interest in structure and abstraction. Portraiture is another of her powers- as in her Self-Portrait of 193 2 and the three-part screen of Siamese Cats.
Whether figurative or abstraction, this exhibition is saturated with color and elements of surrealism. Purity and mystery, narrative and nonobjectivity cohabit in these compositions.
DORR BOTHWELL received many honours in her lifetime, including the 1979 San Francisco Women in the Arts Award and twc Pollock-Krasner grants for 1998-2000. Her art is in the collections of museums throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Hunterian Galleries, Glasgow, Scotland.