Adolf Dehn (1895–1968), American painter in multimedia and acclaimed master lithographer, left his Minnesota hometown after formal training at the Minneapolis Art Institute to study at the Art Students League in New York. He toured Europe in the early 1920s, quickly acclimating to the continental lifestyle and adeptly depicting its nuances and idiosyncrasies with prolific lithographs and sketches. His critical and satirical renderings of the political movements, social conventions, and governmental policies in post–World War I Europe during “Le Crazy Years” gave the Midwestern artist ample material for his growing body of work.
Sailing back to the United States in 1929, Dehn survived the Great Depression with commercial artwork and contributions to popular magazines such as The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. His clever drawings that reflected the Jazz Age’s culture and fashionable society made him a favorite of Frank Crowninshield, Vanity Fair’s renowned editor.
During this time, while Dehn captured the heyday of Manhattan’s burlesque theaters, lively Harlem nightclubs, impressive skyline, and busy harbor, he was continuously drawn to Central Park—his predilection for the city’s magnificent green space was a sustaining source of inspiration and subject matter. Adolf Dehn: Midcentury Manhattan candidly examines the life and work of this exceptional, adventurous, and intrepid artist as he moved skillfully and capably between lithography, ink-wash drawings, gouache, casein painting, and watercolors. Combining numerous vintage photographs with newly discovered, Manhattan-inspired prints and drawings from the collections of, among others, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Adolf Dehn: Midcentury Manhattan traces how Dehn’s art reflected the spirit, pulse, and uniquely American tonalities of The City of Dreams.

Philip Eliasoph, PhD, is an art historian in Fairfield University’s Visual & Performing Arts department and the author of numerous scholarly books, catalogues, articles, and reviews. He was recently appointed to be special assistant to the president for arts and culture. In 2016, he was invited to design and curate a weekly Arts & Visual Culture blog for the New York Times international education platform. He is also an elected member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art, UNESCO’s art critic organization based in Paris. Henry Adams, PhD, is the Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of 14 art-related books and catalogues, as well as hundreds of articles on art and artists. He has also served as the curator of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Contents: vii
Foreword: Philip Eliasoph and Adolf Dehn: xi
Chapter I. 1941: The Axis Spins—A Life of Art: 1
Chapter II. Waterville, Minneapolis, Guardhouse Prison: Career versus Conscience: 17
Chapter III. Dangerous Girls: Expatriate Pleasures—“Le Crazy Years”: 29
Chapter IV. From the Crash to the A-Bomb: Art & the Politics of Culture: 37
Chapter V. Life’s Rita Hayworth, Cover Girl, and Adolf Dehn Inside: An American Pictorial: 51
Chapter VI. Caricature & Satire: “Babes” of Burlesque, High-Society Babbitts, Jitterbugging in Harlem: 61
Chapter VII. Central Park: Nature’s Urban Canvas: 87
Chapter VIII. Rhapsody in Blue: Subway, Skyscraper, Skyline: 105
Chapter IX. “So We Beat On”: 115
Paintings and Drawings: 127
Prints: 147
Acknowledgments: 165
Chronology: 169
Collections: 170
Exhibitions, 1915–2017: 172
Selected Bibliography: 175
Photography Credits: 177
Index: 178
Copyright Page: 182

Philip [Eliasoph] has identified a major theme in Dehn’s work that other writers have overlooked: his extraordinary focus on the city of New York from varying perspectives. In our popular understanding of what it means to be American, New York City has always had a peculiar place. On the one hand, it’s the least American of American cities—an amazing melting pot of races and ethnicities. Most New Yorkers are adopted New Yorkers, as indeed could be said of Dehn himself. Yet what could be more uniquely American than New York City? No city, indeed, no place in the United States, created an image of America so strikingly different from anything found in Europe. New York was unique in its scale and magnificence—a spectacle unlike any other in the world, a popular symbol for what was matchless about America. Dehn’s . . . extraordinary focus on the city of New York Dehn’s art becomes an emblem of something deeper, of a special moment in the history of New York and in the creation of a uniquely American culture—the moment when New York became the greatest, the most magical city in the world.