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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
ADOLPH DEHN (1895-1968)
Blackbirds. Lithograph on wove paper, 1932. 244x371 mm; 9⅞x14⅞ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 5/10 in pencil, lower margins. Printed by Edmond Desjobert, Paris. Illustrated: "The Prints of Adolf Dehn A catalogue Raisonné," Jocelyn Pang Lumsdaine & Thomas O'Sullivan, plate #29. "Adolf Dehn Midcentury Manhattan," Philip Eliasoph, p. 75 (another impression).
Throughout the 1930s, Dehn executed prints and original works peering into jazz age nightlife. Scenes like Blackbirds portrayed the inner world of cabarets and bars, depicting the interactions of white patrons and Black performers. Philip Eliasoph articulates Dehn's approach to form as way "to heighten each dancer's legs, arms, and twisted torso, Dehn used his lithographic crayon with a post-Cubist angularity....In their natural gestures and rhythms, Dehn's black dancers form a dynamic fusion of Picasso's maidens with [Umberto] Boccioni's forms in space." Eliasoph p.75.
