Chronology

DORR BOTHWELL CHRONOLOGY (1902-2000)

Dorr Bothwell
1902 Born in San Francisco, CA, May 3rd
1906 Tells parents she will become an artist
1911 Moves to San Diego with parents
1916 Begins art studies under Anna Valentien at “B” Street School in San Diego; Donal Hord is a classmate
1921-1924 Studies with Gottardo Piazzoni, California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco; Rudolf Schaffer School of Design, San Francisco; University of Oregon
1924-1927 Studio, San Francisco, Montgomery Block
1925 Charter member of the Society of San Francisco Women Artists
1925-1927 Opens Modern Gallery, in the Montgomery Block, Montgomery Street, San Francisco, with eight other artists
1928-1929 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, lecturing, and performing as “Dainty Dorr Bothwell”
1930-1931 Travels and studies in England, France, and Germany
1931 Returns to San Diego from Europe
1932-1934 Settles in San Diego, married to sculptor Donal Hord
1934 Separates from Donal Hord
1934 Moves to La Jolla
1934 Moves to Los Angeles and joins post-surrealist group around Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg
1935-1936 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
1937-1938 Designs small decorative ceramics, notably head vases, for the new Catalina Division of Gladding-McBean
1938-1939 WPA, designs dioramas/mechanized exhibitions for L.A. County  Museum
1939-1940 creates murals for Manning’s Coffee Restaurant, San Francisco (possibly the Manning’s on Sutter Street)
1940 Moves to San Francisco,
1943 Sees an exhibition of serigraphs and is inspired to lean the technique
1944-1948 Teaches at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco
1949-1951 Goes to Paris on Abraham Rosenberg Fellowship for Art Study Abroad
1952 Teaches at Parsons School of Design, New York
1953-1958 Resumes teaching at California School of Fine Arts
1959-1996 Teaches at San Francisco Art Institute
1960 Bill Zacha, founder of Mendocino Art Center invites her to teach and live in his art colony
1961 Moves to Mendocino
1961-1997 Instructs at Mendocino Art Center
1964-1978 Teaches composition/design at Ansel Adams Photography Workshops, Yosemite
1966-1967 In Nigeria and Tunisia, does photo-documentation of craft techniques
1968 Authors Notan – on the Interaction of Positive and Negative Spaces with Marlys Mayfield (aka Marlys Frey); 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
1982-1985 Travels and studies in China and Japan
1992 Settles in Arizona
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 Ft. Bragg, California September 24 at age 98

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
1948-1952 Serigraph Galleries, New York, NY
1958 Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY
M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA
1962-1968 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
1976-1977 Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1977 Falkirk Center, San Rafael, CA
1979 Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1982 Bay Window Gallery, Mendocino, CA
1985-1987 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
1997 Dorr Bothwell: Paintings and Screenprints, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Dorr Bothwell: A Special Vision, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Dorr Bothwell: Original Prints from Three Decades, Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, 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
1952-1958 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
1990-1992 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
1995-1997 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
2000-2001 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
2001-2003 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
2002-2003 Holiday Highlights, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2003 With an Eye and a Passion: Selections from the Allan and Susan Marion Collection, 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
2003-2004 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
2004 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:
1944 Good Neighbor Color Book: Carlos and Conchita in Coffeeland, Dorr Bothwell, Mannings Coffee, Inc., Paperback, 24 pages
1968 Notan: The Principle of Light and Dark Design, Dorr Bothwell and Marlys Mayfield (aka Marlys Frey), Van Nostrand-Reinhold, New York
1976 Notan reissued in paperback
1977 Notan translated into Danish
1991 Notan, new English language edition, Dover Publications
2000 Dorr Bothwell’s African Sketchbook, Monica Hannasch, editor, Arte Grafiche Ambrosini – Roma
2013 Dorr Bothwell, Straws in the Wind: An Artist’s Life as told to Bruce Levene, Mendocino Publications, Pacific Transcriptions, Mendocino, CA

Source: Tobey C. Moss Gallery (2017)
7321 Beverley Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Other Resources:
Undated “Dorr Bothwell Biography” (ArtScene)
1981 Stevenson, Charles. “Local Artists on Avant Garde: Charles Stevenson talks about the onward march of culture and other things related to the avant garde.” Arts & Entertainment Magazine, March 1981. Antonia Lamb, editor. Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, California. Pages 8, 9. Print.
1995 Fort, Ilene Susan. The Adventurers, the Eccentrics, and the Dreamers: Women Modernists of Southern California, Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945. Patricia Trenton, editor. ISBN 978-0-520-20203-0. University of California Press, 1995. Pages 76, 80, 82, 86, 89, 95, 98. Print.
1995 Landauer, Susan. “Searching for Selfhood: Woman Artists of Northern California”, Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945. Patricia Trenton, editor.ISBN 978-0-520-20203-0. University of California Press, 1995. Pages 25, 32, 37, 38. Print.
1999 Bowers, Karen. “Dorr Bothwell: Original Prints from Three Decades”, Arts & Entertainment Magazine, March/April 1999. Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, California. Print.
1999 Richard, Valliere T. “Dorr Bothwell: Edited Biography.” Arts & Entertainment Magazine, March/April 1999. Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, California. Print.
2000 Oliver, Myrna. “Dorr Bothwell; Painter Lived Nomadic Life.” Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2000: B-8. Print.