Archive of the Mendocino Heritage Artists
DORR BOTHWELL (1902-2000): A CHRONOLOGY
1902 Born in San Francisco, CA
1906 Tells parents she will become an artist (“a nartist”); Survives the April 18, 2006 San Francisco Earthquake (and will remember details of that day).
1911 Moves to San Diego with parents
1916 Begins art studies under Anna Valentien, Donal Hord is a classmate
1921-24 Studies with Gottardo Piazzoni, California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco; Rudolf Schaffer School of Design, San Francisco; University of Oregon
1924-27 Studio, San Francisco, Montgomery Block
1925 Charter member of the Society of San Francisco Women Artists
1925-27 Opens Modern Gallery, Montgomery Street, San Francisco with eight other artists
1928-29 Travels to Samoa, becomes the adopted daughter of the tribe’s chief and lives as a member of the tribe, painting the whole time
1930 Returns to San Francisco for two weeks, becoming a local celebrity for her time in Samoa
1930-31 Travels and studies in England, France, and Germany
1931 Returns to San Diego from Europe
1932-34 Settles in San Diego, married to sculptor Donal Hord
1934 Separates from Donal Hord; moves to La Jolla; Moves to Los Angeles and joins post-surrealist group around Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg
1935-36 Ceramic design at Gladding-McBean, Los Angeles
1935 Opens Bothwell-Cooke Gallery in Los Angeles
1936-39 Works in mural division of the Federal Arts Project, Los Angeles
1938-39 WPA, designs dioramas/mechanized exhibitions for L.A. County Museum
1940 Moves to San Francisco, creates murals for Manning Coffee Restaurant, Sutter Street
1943 Sees an exhibition of serigraphs and is inspired to learn the technique
1944-48 Teaches at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco
1949-51 Goes to Paris on Abraham Rosenberg Fellowship for Art Study Abroad
1952 Teaches at Parsons School of Design, New York
1953-58 Resumes teaching at California School of Fine Arts
1959-96 Teaches at San Francisco Art Institute
1960 Bill Zacha, founder of Mendocino Art Center invites her to teach and live in his art colony. Traveling that year, unable to accept; in her stead, sends Hilda Pertha to become the first painting instructor at the Mendocino Art Center
1961-97 Moves to Mendocino; teaches painting at Mendocino Art Center
1964-78 Teaches composition/design at Ansel Adams Photography Workshops, Yosemite
1966-67 In Nigeria and Tunisia, photo-documentation of craft techniques
1968 Authors Notan – on the Interaction of Positive and Negative Spaces with Marlys Mayfield; reissued in 1976; first translation 1977(Danish)
1970 Travels and studies in England, France, and Holland
1971 Conducts symposium for teachers, Notan Design London, England
1974 Travels and studies in Bali, Java, and Sumatra
1979 Instructor in Composition at Victor School of Photography, Colorado; Receives San Francisco Women in the Arts Award, Women’s Caucus for Art
1982,85 Travels and studies in China and Japan
1992 Moves to Arizona; finds her collage work impossible in the hot dry climate, moves back to California
1998 Receives Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award
1999 Travels to San Diego Historical Museum to speak at Donal Hord Exhibition
2000 Receives a second Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, which allows her to have her work, records and memoirs preserved and archived; Speaks at an exhibition in San Diego honoring the work of Donal Hord; Returns to Mendocino due to failing vision and mobility. Dies in Fort Bragg, California, September 24, 2000 at age 98
2013, 2018 Posthumous publication: Dorr Bothwell: Straws in the Wind: An Artist’s Life as Told to Bruce Levene, first edition, Pacific Transcriptions, Mendocino
Selected Solo Exhibitions
1927 Modern Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1929 San Diego Fine Arts Museum, CA
1930 Beaux Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1941 San Francisco Art Association, CA
1948-52 Serigraph Galleries, New York, NY
1958 Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY; M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA
1962-68 Zacha’s Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1963 Signs and Fences, M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA
1969 The Daily Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1972 Bolles Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1976-77 Zacha’s Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1977 Falkirk Center, San Rafael, CA
1979 Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1982 Zacha’s Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1985-87 Zacha’s Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1989 Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1991 Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1993 Dorr Bothwell: Screenprints, Drawings, Paintings, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1994 Tau/Tao Series: New Mixed Media, Katherine Lee Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1997 Dorr Bothwell: Paintings and Screenprints, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Dorr Bothwell: Original Prints from Three Decades, Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, CA; Dorr Bothwell: A Special Vision, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2001 Memorial Retrospective, Tobey C. Moss Gallery
2004 Dorr Bothwell: An Eye Towards Abstraction, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions
1925 San Francisco Art Association, Fine Arts Building, San Francisco, CA
1927 San Diego Art Guild, San Diego, CA
1929 San Francisco Art Association, San Francisco, CA
1932 San Diego Art Guild, San Diego, CA
1933 San Diego Art Guild, San Diego, CA
1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, CA
1952 M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA; The Serigraph, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
1952-58 Carnegie International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, PA
1955 Il Bienal de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
1977 Thirty Years of American Printmaking, Brooklyn Museum, NY
1990 A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890-1960, Worcester Art Museum, MA
1990-92 A Time and Place, The Ries Collection: Oakland Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach, Florida
1995 Pacific Dreams: Current of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art 1934-1957, Oakland Art Museum; UCLA/Hammer Museum of Art; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT
1995-97 Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West 1890-1945, Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Los Angeles, CA; Gilcrease Museum, OK
1996 On the Edge of America, California Modernist Art 1900-1950, Jack Rutberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2000 Circles of Influence: Impressionism to Modernism in Southern California Art, Orange County Museum of Art, CA
2000-01 Made in California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
2001 Head Count, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA; Women: On Common Ground, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2001-03 Vital Forms: American Art in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960, Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
2002 Creative Transitions, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2002-03 Holiday Highlights, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2003 With an Eye and a Passion: Selections from the Allan and Susan Marion C0llection, The Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA; From Brice and Feitelson to Goya and Ribera: Four Centuries of the Figure, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2003-04 Not So Still Life, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA
2004 Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA; Of Women/By Women, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2006 Drawings: The Hand of the Artist, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2007 The She of It, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Selected Public Collections
Achenbach Foundation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
New York Public Library, New York, NY
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT
Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Publications
1968 Notan: The Principle of Light and Dark Design, Bothwell and Frey, Van Nostrand-Reinhold, New York
1976 Notan reissued in paperback, Dover Publications, New York
1977 Notan translated into Danish
1991 Notan: The Principle of Light and Dark Design, new English edition
[More about Notan]
2013 Dorr Bothwell: Straws in the Wind: An Artist’s Life as Told to Bruce Levene, first edition, Pacific Transcriptions, Mendocino
2018 Dorr Bothwell: Straws in the Wind: An Artist’s Life as Told to Bruce Levene, reissued. [More about Straws in the Wind]
Source: Tobey C. Moss Gallery; updated by CGB (2018)
All works of visual art by Dorr Bothwell are © 2022 The Dorr Bothwell Trust, Mill Valley, California. For permission to reproduce images by Dorr Bothwell, contact
Marlys Mayfield, Trustee, the Dorr Bothwell Trust.
LINKS
About Dorr Bothwell
Dorr Bothwell: Straws in the Wind: an Artist’s Life as Told to Bruce Levene
Dorr Bothwell: Artwork
Dorr Bothwell in Her Own Words
Red Roses for Bill
The Mendocino Heritage Artists
Welcome!