Dorr Bothwell: California Modernist Artist

 

To those who live in the eastern region of the United States, California has been, and continues to be seen as another country. Identified with Hollywood and popular culture, the art of California appears to have little connection with the art of Europe and the more traditional East Coast, specifically the establishment in New York City. From my own experience as one who grew up in and around Washington, D.C., when return to visit my "home," people always seem to be taken aback or quite simply amazed when I tell them I've lived in Southern California for 35 years--as if I've just dropped in from Mars.

During the early years of the twentieth century when cross-continental travel became easier, more people, including artists, actors, writers, and the like, headed west where the climate and the landscape vistas vary, in some cases, in the extreme, within just a few miles. Translation: this means that those who live here enjoy incredible weather most of the year and the opportunity for artists and photographers to record nature at its most stunning, is nearly always guaranteed.

To be an artist in Southern California, you had to be, as Lorser Feitelson emphasized, quite sure you could live with your own art. [1] It took self-confidence, independence, and an adventurous spirit to move to the west during the twenties and thirties.




















Dorr Hodgson Bothwell (1902–2000) was an American artist, designer, educator, and world-traveller. She was born in San Francisco, California,  moved to San Diego when she was nine years old and spent her childhood there. At age 19, Bothwelll returned to the Bay Area to study art where she began her art career at the California School of Fine Arts in 1921 under the tutelage of Gottardo Piazzoni, and later, with Rudolf Schaeffer at the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco until the year 1925. She was a member of the San Francisco Art Association, and upon her return to San Diego, she joined the San Diego Art Guild and San Diego Moderns.

After receiving a modest inheritance from her great-aunt, Dorr decided to travel. After having seen Robert Flaherty's documentary film on the South Seas Islands, Moana (1926), she made the decision to go to American Samoa, a daring enterprise for a young woman alone, particularly in those days. She was adopted by a tribal leader and she became his daughter and chief hostess. While there, Bothwell did paintings in oil and watercolor, drawings, linoleum block prints, and measured drawings of tapa cloth designs. She remained in Samoa for two years, and sent back a show that was exhibited in San Diego and San Francisco. This show produced enough income to allow her to continue her travels.[2]

 When she returned to San Diego in1932, she became re-acquainted with and then married sculptor Donal Hord, but the union lasted just two years. After the couple separated, Bothwell moved to Los Angeles in 1934, where she joined the post-surrealist group around Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg, and worked in the mural division of the Federal Arts Project, where she learned the art of screen printing, which would become her favored graphic technique.

Dorr Bothwell

Camping by the Shore

ca.1944

Color Serigraph/Screenprint

12 x 9 3/4 inches

She returned to San Francisco in 1942. Bothwell loved to travel. She went to Paris in 1949/51, to Africa in 1966/67, to England, France and Holland in 1970, to Bali, Java and Sumatra in 1974, and to China and Japan in 1982/85. Throughout her travels, Bothwell studied indigenous artistic traditions in order to discover their rules of design. Growing out of a deep understanding that all things are integrated, she learned to see order and design in nature. Translation from the Maya represents the essence of Bothwell’s artistic and spiritual search.

Dorr Bothwell

End of Summer

ca. 1951

Color Serigraph/Screenprint

18 3/8 x 11 15/16 inches

Dorr was an innovator in the use of serigraphy as a fine art medium and was best known for her Surrealist inspired prints (though she rejected "Surrealism" as a description of her art).  During her career she worked in various styles from figurative to abstraction and created oil paintings, watercolors, sculptures and assemblages. In addition to her professional art career, Dorr was an author and a gifted teacher who taught serigraphy, color theory and design at institutions such as the California School of Fine Art, Parsons School of Design and the San Francisco Art Institute.  She passed away at the age of 98 on September 24, 2000. [3]

Dorr Bothwell

Exhibition

ca.1947

 serigraph, 

30, 11 1/8 x 8 7/8 inches

 

Dorr Bothwell

Ideograph

ca.1946

 serigraph 

35, 11 1/8 x 8 7/8 inches

 

Dorr Bothwell

City Summer

ca.1947

 serigraph 

 33/40, 9 1/4 x 12 5/16 inches

 

For more examples of Dorr Bothwell's extraordinary work, please visit  Annex Galleries or Tobey C. Moss Gallery.

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1. Paul J. Karlstrom, ed., On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950, (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1996), 161.
2. Thomas L. Scharf, ed., "Doris (Dorr) Hodgson Bothwell, Painting Ladies-The Artists-The Images," The Journal of San Diego History, San Diego Historical Society Quarterly, 32, no. 3 (Summer 1986).
3. Mid-Centuria, Dorr Bothwell Serigraphs, http://www.midcenturia.com/2011/02/dorr-bothwell-serigraphs.html, (retrieved September 25, 2013).

Alice Carr de Creeft: Sculptor

Alice Carr de Creeft
Bull
Bronze
c.a. 1930s
h 7 x w 15.5 inches

Alice Robertson Carr de Creeft was a sculptor who developed her skill in crafting animals, most notably horses, buffaloes, and bulls. Carr spent her early years in Roanoke, Virginia, until her family relocated to Sun River Valley in Montana. After completing high school in Seattle, Washington, she attended the Art Students League of New York(1919-1920) and the Art Institute of Chicago (1922-1923). She later spent three years in Paris during the years 1926-1929 during which time she studied at the Grande Chaumiere and Ecole des Animalieres and direct carving with Jose de Creeft, whom she married in 1928. During their nine-year marriage, the de Creefts divided their time between the island of Mallorca and NYC, ultimately settling in Santa Barbara, California. In addition to raising three children, de Creeft continued to sculpt.

Primarily a sculptor of animals, de Creeft focused on horses in particular. In 1921, she completed Stirrups, a model of a thoroughbred stallion. In later years she fell in love with Zamal, a desert-bred Arabian stallion owned by Sunical Ranch in San Simeon, California. [1] In 1928, while in Europe, de Creeft arrived at the studio of artist/printmaker Stanley William Hayter to buy some of his prints. A week later she and a friend revisited Hayter with a request that he teach them printmaking techniques. Intending to discourage, Hayter claimed that he didn't have a press or the equipment necessary to teach them, however, if there were two more people interested in learning, he might consider it.
A week later they were back with two others and persuaded Hayter to set up a workshop to learn the craft.

Her husband, Jose, was a sculptor who was largely responsible for the re-introduction of the direct-carving technique. He was commissioned to create a bronze statue of Alice in Wonderland in New York's Central Park. [2] Their daughter, Donna, was the model for the Alice figure.

                                                            Inauguration, 1959, Central Park
                                                          Jose de Creeft and daughter, Donna

Alice de Creeft completed additional commissions, including sculptures of other horses, most notably, Secretariat in 1973. Of her western pieces, de Creeft did studies of buffaloes while she was in living in Seattle. Her sculpture, Bull (seen above) and a variety of other statues were created for Santa Barbara County ranchers. Beginning in the 1960s, de Creeft added rodeo subjects to her western themes.

Alice Carr de Creeft
On the Hunt
Bronze
c.a. 1930s
15.50 x 19 x 7.50 inches

During the 1970s de Creeft taught at the Santa Barbara Art Institute.  Her exhibitions include those of the Studio Club, New York; Artists of the Pacific Northwest, Seattle; Seattle Fine Arts Society, Seattle; Stockbridge Art Association, Massachusetts; Santa Barbara Artists; Artists of Los Angeles; and the Los Angeles County Fair. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Pollensa, Mallorca, Spain; National Art Museum of Sport, New York; River Edge Foundation, Calgary, Canada; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California.

Alice de Creeft  died in Santa Barbara on Aug. 2, 1996.

Her daughter, Nina de Creeft Ward, actively an artist in her own right, works out of Santa Barbara in Southern California. She enjoys sculpting and monoprint. Here is the url to her website: http://ninadecreeftward.com/links.html.

An addendum to the above: I received an email from Barbara Decreeft who informed me that 

"Donna de Creeft, the girl in the photo of the "Alice in Wonderland" sculpture, is the daughter of Jose de Creeft and Lorrie Goulet de Creeft ...Donna is the half sister of Nina de Creeft Ward. Nins is the daughter of Alice de Creeft." 

Thank you Barbara for the additional information!_____________________________________________
1. Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 71-72.
2. "Alice in Wonderland", centralpark2000.com. (Retrieved September 11, 2013).