Untitled c. 1953 - 1991

This intriguing little print was made by Dorothy Dehner, and its lines and shapes just popped out of her head, I bet. It's got these geometric, linear forms, almost architectural but not quite, floating in a soft field of creamy paper. Imagine Dehner, bending over the plate, etching these lines with such deliberation, each one a little journey. There's a real sense of play here, a kind of freedom in the way the shapes interact—you can see her working out spatial relationships, maybe even telling a story without words. I like the tension between the precision of the lines and the looseness of the composition. It reminds me a bit of other artists of the time who were also searching for new ways to represent space and form, like maybe some early Gorky, but she’s got her own thing going on. It’s like she's inviting us into her own private world of shapes and lines, and we get to make up our own stories about what it all means.