Winter Day at Key West

Adolf Arthur DehnWW-1942-065188

1942·Watercolor with touches of gouache, over graphite, on ivory watercolor paper·54.2 × 75.3 cm (21 3/8 × 29 11/16 in.)

Adolf Dehn received his early artistic training in his native Minnesota before winning a prestigious scholarship to the Art Students League in New York. Imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War I, he moved to Paris and Vienna after the war, making a living with the caricatures he published in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Vogue. His return to the United States coincided with the Great Depression, and like many Americans, he lived out the decade of the 1930s in poverty. During and after World War II, he turned to the medium of watercolor, capturing evocative landscapes of rural America such as this Florida scene.

Catalogue

Year: 1942
Medium: Watercolor with touches of gouache, over graphite, on ivory watercolor paper
Dimensions: 54.2 × 75.3 cm (21 3/8 × 29 11/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Adolf Arthur Dehn

Artist

Adolf Arthur Dehn

Mixed Media

Adolf Dehn was an American artist known mainly as a lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, he participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including regionalism, social realism, and caricature. A two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles.

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