Adolf Dehn

Adolf Dehn
Dehn working on a painting for submission to Art Week, 1940
Born	(1895-11-22)November 22, 1895 Waterville, Minnesota, United States
Died	May 19, 1968(1968-05-19) (aged 72) New York City, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Education	Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Known for	Lithography, painting, printmaking
Movement	Regionalism, Social Realism, Caricature
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship

Adolf Dehn (22 November 1895 – 19 May 1968) was an American lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, Dehn participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including Regionalism, Social Realism, and caricature. Two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles.

Dehn was born in 1895 in Waterville, Minnesota. Dehn began creating artwork at the age of six and by the time of his death had created nearly 650 images.

After graduating as valedictorian from Waterville High School, he went to the Minneapolis School of Art, known today as the (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) where he met and became a close friend of Wanda Gág. Later, he and Gág were two of only a dozen students in the country to earn a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York. After graduation, he was drafted to serve in World War I, but he was a conscientious objector. Dehn was imprisoned for two years for refusing to serve in the military.

After the war was over, he went to Europe. In Paris and Vienna he belonged to a group of intellectuals and artists, including E.E. Cummings. A number of the caricatures he drew depicting the Roaring 20s, burlesque, opera houses, and the café scene appeared in such magazines as Vanity Fair. His favorite medium was lithography, and he alternated between spoofing high society and creating beautiful landscapes. It was in Paris that Dehn met his first wife, Mura Ziperovitch, a dancer who had left the Soviet Union.

In 1929 he returned to the New York with his wife. As the Great Depression had taken hold of the country, they were desperately poor, and their financial difficulties contributed to their ultimate divorce. In the 1930s, his work began to appear in magazines such as the New Yorker and Vogue. During his period as a lithographer, his striking images of New York City, including Central Park, captured the essence of the Roaring 20s and the 1930s Depression era.