St. Olaf College

Adolf Arthur Dehn

Regionalism, Social Realism, Caricature painter, printmaker
United States
1895 - 1968

View objects by this artist.

Adolf Dehn was born in Waterville, Minnesota, in 1895. His upbringing was unconventional; his mother was a feminist socialist, and his father was an anarchist. Dehn’s arts education began at the Minneapolis School of Art, where he made a handful of artist friends who would eventually move with him to New York in 1917 to join the Art Students League. In 1920, he met George Miller, a master printer, who introduced him to lithography. It then became his preferred medium.

Dehn traveled Europe from 1921 until 1929, when he returned to New York for an exhibition held at the Weyhe Gallery. The exhibition consisted mostly of lithographs, but had moderate sales although receiving good responses from critics. By the mid-1930s, Dehn had turned away from his more satirical works to focus on watercolor paintings of landscapes, which were exceedingly popular. The success of his newer works enabled him to travel around the United States and abroad to countries such as Venezuela, and would later garner job opportunities for him,  such as teaching, and work in the Navy during WWII. From the 1940s into the ‘60s, Dehn traveled the world with his wife, creating his own less satirical, more fanciful lithographs alongside commercial works. Dehn died in New York in 1968 while in the midst of writing a book and organizing a retrospective.

Madison Duran ‘20
September 2019

Sources:
“Adolf Dehn,” Childs Gallery, https://childsgallery.com/artist/adolf-dehn/.
“Adolf Dehn,” Smithsonian American Art Museum,
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/adolf-dehn-1178.