Adolf Dehn, Street in Key West, 1942, watercolor, 14 by 21 inches, Signed and dated lower left, 42, label verso.
Adolf Dehn was a master lithographer, watercolorist, whose work centered on the American scene. * His landscapes and satirical portraits of the human condition were exhibited in virtually every major museum in the country, his interest ranging from strollers in Central Park in New York City to bathers in Palm Beach. Dehn’s work here in Florida is well known.
Adolf Dehn, Beach at Key West, 1944, gouache and watercolor on paper, 40.5 by 57 cm.
Born on a farm in Waterville, Minnesota, Dehn began his studies at the Minneapolis School of Art. In 1918 a scholarship to the Art Students’ League brought him to New York City where he supported himself by painting furniture and working as a night watchman. Dehn left the country in 1921 to study lithography and print making in Europe. Surviving on $30 a month, over the next nine years he lived and studied in Paris, Vienna, and briefly in London, before returning home in 1929 to the Great Depression.
Adolf Dehn, Franky and Johnny, Paris, 1928, lithograph 8 18 by 13 1/8, signed, dated and numbered 12/30 in pencil.
Dehn’s early work, black and white lithography, reflect a need for accurate description, his style simple, intense, with elements of satire. In 1934 he established the Adolf Dehn Print Club and began working with Associated American Artists, who over many years published editions of more than twenty of his images.
In 1936 Dehn began to add color to his work. He commented, “I was a black and white artist but I was not blind. I sat on a ship coming back from Europe and said to myself, this has to stop…and I made a definite decision: When I get back, I shall paint a watercolor every day.” Now using vivid color in observing the American scene, Dehn worked for the Federal Art Project; was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and included in Whitney Museum of American Art exhibits.
Adolf Dehn, Key West Harbor, watercolor, 18 by 28 inches. Signed lower right, provenance, Harmon Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida.
Dehn’s watercolor, Dunes at Pensacola, 1938, document his first visit to Florida. In January 1941 he began teaching watercolor at the Norton Gallery School of Art for the winter season and joined a group of Key West artists including Marha Watson (Sauer), Doris Lee and her husband Arnold Blanch, who exhibited at the Key West Art Center. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, noted his exhibiting two “papers from his recent Key West repertoire, which reach a new high in his watercolor narratives.”
Adolf Dehn, The Queen of Key West, 1948, oil on board, 30 by 20 inches. Signed lower right and tittled on verso.
The Palm Beach Post noted Dehn’s work in Key West, at a Society of the Four Arts exhibit in December 1943, “Adolf Dehn has a captivating and amusing genre painting, showing the aftermath of a hurricane with old wrecks still to be seen along the coast, …showing modern art can be beautiful and intelligible…” Dehn continued to teach at the Norton Gallery until In 1961, the year he was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in recognition of more than 40 years of significant achievement.
Adolf Dehn, Key West Beach, lithograph, 9 1/2 by 14 inches, signed lower right.
After his death in 1968, Dehn’s work continued to be honored here in Florida. In 1985 the Harmon-Meek Gallery in Naples, Florida sponsored The Adolf Dehn Memorial Retrospective Exhibition, which traveled to museums in Roanoke, Virgina; Canton Ohio; Elkhart, and Terre Haute, Indiana; Peoria, Illinois, and the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine. In 1991 the Boca Raton Museum of Art, sponsored an Adolf Dehn Retrospective.
A complete collection of Dehn’s prints is in the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society. Guy Penne du Bois said of Dehn: “Although Adolf Dehn spent most of his formative years in Europe, he is as American as buckwheat cakes with sausages.”
*Dehn’s first name has been spelled Adolph, Adolpf or Adolf. His obituary, published in the Star Tribune, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, his hometown, used both Adolpf and Adolf other newspapers, Adolph. We have used Adolf.
Born: 1895, Waterville, Minnesota. Died: 1968. Education: Minneapolis School of Art with John Flannagan, Wanda Gag, Harry Gottlieb, Elizabeth Olds, Arnold Blanch, and Lucille Lundquist; Art Students League, NYC; Traveled to Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London in 1920’s. Membership: National Academy of Design; National Institute of Arts and Letters; American Watercolor Society; Society of American Graphic Artist; Century Club. Exhibits: Metropolitan Museum; Whitney Museum, New York; Minneapolis Museum; Norton Museum; Smithsonian Institution, 1947; Key West, Casa Marina Hotel, March 4, 1948; Sarasota Art Association, First National Members Show of Watercolors and Ceramics, January 1951, judge; Southeastern Circuit Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings, 1951. Sponsored by Florida Gulf Coast Art Center, Belleair; Rudolph Galleries, Miami, February 1953, in a group exhibit, Garden of the Gods; Washington Art Galleries, Miami Beach, November 1953, fourteen paintings including Snow Scene; Rudolph Galleries, Coral Gables, one man show, February 1955; University of Missouri, 1961; Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, retrospective, 1969; Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida, watercolor landscapes, circulated 1985 to 1987; Minnesota Historical Society, 1987.
