Seated Woman (Samoa)

 

Dorr Bothwell

  1902 - 2000 (biography)

1928  

graphite drawing 

10 1/2 x 7 5/16" image size 

pencil signed, upper right hand corner of image 

1 of 1 unique 

dated after signature 

 

unknown 

 

 

ABMM261 

$850.00 

In the early 1920s Dorr Bothwell took courses in scuplture from Ralph Stackpole, who was greatly influenced by the work of Diego Rivera. The style of the Mexican Modernist sculptors, painters, and muralists influenced many of the leading modern artists of California, and this is likely where Bothwell's stylized imagery came from. In her first images of the island of Samoa - where she landed in summer of 1928 - Bothwell's figures could be mistaken for the preliminary mural sketches of Mexican artists: voluminous, rounded shapes with minimal detail, keeping the visual information relegated to a brief and intimate moment.This image is universal, and easily could be of a woman in a cosmopolitan apartment, seated on the floor and listening to records, as it is of a Samoan native.