Dorothea Rockburne

Born in Montreal, Canada (1932). Lives and works in New York, NY. Attended the Montreal Museum School, Montreal, Canada (1948-1950). Attended Black Mountain College, Ashville, NC (1950-1952) where she studied with Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, and Robert Rauschenberg among other contemporaries. While at Black Mountain College, the teachings of Max Dehn, a renowned German mathematician and close friend of Albert Einstein, made arguably the largest impact on Rockburne’s work. Dehn educated Rockburne about Pythagorean and Euclidean geometry, group theory and topology, and the concepts of harmonic intervals. Dehn’s teachings often merged the mathematical world and the natural world providing Rockburne with new and complex approaches to her work. Rockburne’s studies with Dehn, along with her interests in the Golden Mean, astronomy, cosmology and lifelong fascination with Egyptians’ use of proportion and light, invariably shaped her oeuvre. Working with varied materials including industrial wrinkle-finish paint, tar, carbon paper and metal as well as natural materials such as canvas, paper, and chipboard, Rockburne paints, cuts, draws, folds and calculates to create complex works of art built upon mathematical foundations. Selected museum exhibitions include Dorothea Rockburne: In My Mind’s Eye, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY (2011); On Line: Drawing Through the 20th Century, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2010-11); The Women of Black Mountain College, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Ashville, NC (2008-9); High Times, Hard Times, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC (2006); Dorothea Rockburne, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (1989); and Dorothea Rockburne: Locus, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1981). Her work in in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, and the Auckland City Art Museum, Auckland, New Zealand among many others.

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