Dorothea Rockburne
Bentwood chairs, tire, rope, mirrors, PVC flexible coupling with stainless steel clamps, and enamel paint
142.2 x 86.4cm
55.98 x 34.02 in
Watercolor wax crayon, Aquacryl, enamel paint mounted on oiled chipboard in artist's frame
61 x 53.3cm
24.02 x 20.98 in
Copper wire and enamel paint on layered chipboards
76.2 x 76.2cm
30.00 x 30.00 in
Watercolor wax crayon, Aquacryl, enamel paint mounted on oiled chipboard in artist's frame
51.4 x 43.8cm
20.24 x 17.24 in
Watercolor wax crayon on paper mounted on oiled chipboard
53.3 x 43.2cm
20.98 x 17.01 in
Copper wire and enamel paint on layered chipboards
38.1 x 61cm
15.00 x 24.02 in
Dorothea Rockburne
Born in 1929 in Montreal, Canada
Currently lives and works in New York, NY, United States
Education
1950 - 1954
Black Mountain College, Asheville, North Carolina, United States
2002
Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, College of Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan, United States
2016
Artium Doctor in Mathematics, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, United States
Awards
2020
Guild Hall, New York, NY, United States
2018
International Print Center New York, Spring Benefit Dinner Honoree, United States
2016
Bowdoin College, Honorary Doctorate, United States
2009
National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts, Lifetime Achievement Award, United States
2007
Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Lee Krasner Award, United States
2003
Art Omi International, Francis J. Greenberger Award, United States
2002
National Academy of Design, Pike Award for Watercolor, United States
National Academy of Design, Adolph & Clara Abrig Prize for Watercolor, United States
College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree, United States
Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, United States
2001
American Academy of Arts and Letters, Department of Art, United States
1999
American Academy of Arts and Letters, Jimmy Ernst Lifetime Achievement Award in Art, United States
1997
Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, Inc., Award, United States
1986
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, Milton and Sally Avery Distinguished Professor, United States
1985
Brandeis University, Creative Arts Award, United States
1984
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Visiting Artist, United States
1976
The Art Institute of Chicago, F.L.M. Witkowsky Painting Award, United States
1974
National Endowment for the Arts, United States
1972
Guggenheim Fellow, United States
1963
Walter Guttman Foundation, United States
1957
Walter Gutman Emerging Artist Award, United States
1950
Black Mountain College, Asheville, NC, Entrance Scholarship, United States
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Montreal, Canada, Merit Scholarship, Canada
Montreal Museum School, Montreal, Canada, Arthur Lismer Merit Scholarship, Canada
Residencies
1997
Artist in Residence, Bellagio Study Center, Italy
1991
Artist in Residence, American Academy in Rome, Italy
Collections (selection)
J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, CA, United States
LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), United States
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Achenbach Collection, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, CA, United States
Pitney Bowes Corporation, Stamford, CT, United States
Richard Brown Baker Collection, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, United States
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, United States
The Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, United States
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, United States
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, United States
Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA, United States
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, United States
University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMASS Amherst, MA, United States
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, United States
Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, United States
Ross Art Collection, Ross School of Business, MI, United States
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
Minneapolis Art Institute, Minneapolis, MN, United States
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, United States
Princeton University Art Museum, NJ, United States
Lannan Art Collection, Santa Fe, NM, United States
AT & T Art Collection, New York, NY, United States
Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, United States
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY, United States
The Continental Corporation, New York, NY, United States
Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY, United States
Estee Lauder Cosmetics, Inc., New York, NY, United States
Gilman Paper, New York, NY, United States
Merrill Lynch Corporation, New York, NY, United States
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, United States
Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States
The National Academy of Design Museum, NY, United States
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York, NY, United States
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, United States
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, United States
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithica, NY, United States
Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, United States
PepsiCo, Purchase, NY, United States
The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, United States
Aacken Art Museum, Oberlin, OH, United States
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, United States
Art Gallery, University of Ohio at Columbus, OH, United States
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, United States
Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, United States
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Maslow Collection, Marywood University, Scranton, PA, United States
Mellon Financial Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, United States
David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, United States
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, United States
Dorothea Rockburne has been at the top of her game for half a century. Ever since her first solo show at the Bykert Gallery in 1970, she’s made art that’s inventive, provocative, confident, seductive, imaginative. She’s worked with materials as disparate as crude oil and gold leaf, chipboard and vellum, secco fresco and sign painters enamel paint. She’s created shaped canvases; constructed lines with colored pencil and copper wire and folded paper; and made work in sizes that are as small as 4-inches-by-6-inches and as grand as 35-square-feet overall. Just when you become captivated by her sense of color, you discover an exquisite group of all-white works. Her versatility is astounding. In the end, there is no such thing as a typical Rockburne. When you say her name, it evokes different examples of her art to different people.
Dorothea Rockburne, Paris
January 29 - March 15, 2025
Solo exhibitions
2021
David Nolan Gallery, New York, United States, Giotto's Angels and Knots
2018
Dia: Beacon, Beacon, United States, Dorothea Rockburne
2015
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, United States, Mapping the Ancient Origins of Light
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, United States, A Gift of Knowing: The Art of Dorothea Rockburne
2014
Van Doren Waxter, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Locus I - VI
2013
Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Drawing Which Makes Itself
Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Indication Drawings from the Drawings Which Makes Itself Series
2012
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada, Dorothea Rockburne: In My Mind's Eye
Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Works 1967 – 1972
Greenberg Van Doren at The ADAA Art Show 2012: Dorothea Rockburne
2011
Parrish Art Museum, South Hampton, NY, Dorothea Rockburne: In My Mind's Eye
The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY, Dorothea Rockburne
2010
The New York Studio School, New York, NY, Astronomy Drawings
2009
Beard Gallery at Wheaton College, Norton, United States, Astronomy Drawings. Traveled to: Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, Asheville, United States
2003
Dieu Donné Papermill, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne
Jan Abrams Fine Art, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne : New Paintings on Copper
2000
Lawrence Rubin, Greenberg, Van Doren Fine Art, New York, United States, Ten Years of Astronomy Drawings
1999
Art In General, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne
1997
Ingrid Raab Gallery, Berlin, Germany
1996
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Visible Structure
1995
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, United States, The Transcendent Light of Geometry
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, United States, New Monoprints and Small Paintings
1994
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, United States, Painting from Nature
1992
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY, Dorothea Rockburne: Roman Wall Painting
Galleria Schema, Florence, Italy, Dorothea Rockburne: Paintings
1991
D.P. Fong & Spratt Galleries, San Jose, United States, Roman Wall Works, Painting In Situ
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Circle and Square
1989
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne, New Work: Cut-Ins
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, United States, Dorothea Rockburne, Ten Year Painting Retrospective
1988
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, United States, New Paintings: Pascal and Other Concerns
1987
Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, United States, Dorothea Rockburne, Recent Painting and Drawings
1986
Xavier Fourcade, New York, United States, A Personal Selection: Paintings, 1968-1986
1985
Xavier Fourcade, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne, Painting and Drawing, 1982 – 1985
1983
Galleriet Lund, Lund, Sweden, The Way of Angels
1982
Xavier Fourcade, New York, United States, The Way of Angels, 1981-1982
Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Recent Watercolors and Drawings
1981
David Bellman Gallery, Toronto, Canada, Angels and Conservation Drawings
Xavier Fourcade, New York, United States, Egyptian Paintings and White Angels: 1979 – 1981
Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States, Dorothea Rockburne: Locus
Texas Gallery, Houston, United States, Works from the Egyptian Series
1979
Texas Gallery, Houston, United States, A Decade of Drawings
1978
John Weber Gallery, New York, United States, Drawings: Structure & Curve
1977
Richard Eugene Fuller Gallery of Art, Beaver College, Glenside, United States, Dorothea Rockburne Drawings
Galleria La Polena, Genova, Italy, Rockburne
1976
John Weber Gallery, New York, United States, Working With the Golden Section, 1974 –1976
1975
Galleria Schema, Florence, Italy, 1972 Installations: Carbon Paper Works and Neighborhood
Galerie Charles Kriwin, Brussels, Belgium
1974
Galleria Toselli, Milan, Italy
John Weber Gallery, New York, United States
1973
Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, United States
Lisson Gallery, London, England, Carbon Paper. Functions, Operations, Transitions
Bykert Gallery, New York, United States, Drawing Which Makes Itself
Galleria Toselli, Milan, Italy, Drawing Which Makes Itself
Galleria Schema, Florence, Italy
1972
Bykert Gallery, New York, United States, Ipanema Suite Drawings
University of Rochester Art Gallery, Rochester, United States
Galleria Bonomo Bari, Bari, Italy, 12 Works on Paper
Galleria Toselli, Milan, Italy
1971
Sonnabend Gallery, Paris, France, Oil Drawings/Group
1970
Bykert Gallery, New York, United States, Group/And, Disjunction/Or