42: ADOLF DEHN (1895-1968) 1956 OIL ON PANEL LANDSCAPE

Adolf Arthur Dehn (1895-1968)
Flat Landscape (1956)
The panoramic landscape with terrain composed in bands of color and texture below clouds miles away is signed lower right front and inscribed in detail verso.

This painting is an excellent example of Adolf Dehn's landscape work, as noted by art dealer Deedee Wigmore, who represents the artist's estate and hosted the exhibition Soil and Spirit. She wrote, 'What interested Dehn was the way a farm fits into the land and conveys its beauty and purpose. Dehn experimented with materials to capture the interplay of light and dark areas that would achieve a three-dimensional feeling. The open fields of green landscape continue the contrast of light and dark grassy areas to evoke a sense of rolling land.'

This painting embodies those very characteristics and works in those very same ways.

Worth noting is the visual record of how on small diversified farms it was common to plant pumpkins among the rows in a cornfield. The first distinctive band in this landscape is a dark field of shocked corn and pumpkins on the ground. Borrowed from Native Americans, this approach consolidated labor, replaced nutrients the way crop rotation would, and the broad, low-lying leaves of the pumpkin or squash companion crops blocked sunlight from the soil, retaining moisture and surpressing weeds.

Probably unrelated, a business named Dehn's Pumpkin Patch in Dayton, Minnesota is open September and October of every year still today.
Board measures 19 x 49.25 with a framed size of 24.25H x 54.5W inches.
Very good original untouched condition. There are no issues of major scratches, losses, repairs, in-painting or touch-up. Very good untouched condition. There are no issues of scratches, losses, repairs, in-painting or touch-up as confirmed under UV light.
Provenance: Private collection, Kansas City, Missouri.
$4,000 - $6,000