Dorothy Hood: Select Paintings

Deborah Colton Gallery is pleased to present Dorothy Hood: Select Paintings, an exhibition featuring abstract paintings from Texas native Dorothy Hood, which presents artwork that spans four decades of her artistic career. The exhibition opens Saturday, November 19, with a reception for the artist from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

As one of the early Texas abstract artists, and one of the few female artists working in large-scale throughout the decades, Dorothy Hood led an adventurous life.

Born in Bryan, Texas in 1918 and raised in Houston, she won a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to study at the Art Students League in New York.

On a whim, she drove a roadster to Mexico City with friends in 1941 for a two week tour and ended up staying for almost twenty years.

Hood was front and center in the cultural, political, and social activity of Mexico and Latin America during a period of intense creative ferment. She developed close friendships with all the European exiles, Latin American surrealists, and Mexican social realists of the time — artists, composers, poets, playwrights, and revolutionary writers which influenced her art.

In 1945, she married the famous Bolivian composer José María Velasco Maidana and they traveled the world.

It was upon returning to Houston in 1961, however, that Hood produced the epic paintings that evoked the limitless skies and psychic voids of space, years ahead of NASA images.

Over the next four decades, she became a renowned and highly collected Texas painter whose works were spread across the United States. Her works are included in over 30 major museums throughout the United States, as well as the collections of many individuals, corporations and foundations.

Upon Hood’s death from cancer in 2000, a major portion of the artist’s estate, including 1,017 works of art as well as her archives and studio contents, was acquired by the Art Museum of South Texas.

A large-scale exhibition of Hood’s works is currently on view at the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, accompanied by an exhibition monograph, both which share a title: The Color of Being/El Color del Ser: Dorothy Hood (1918-2000). This exhibition marks the first major retrospective of her artwork and the monograph is the first in-depth scholarly analysis of her life and artistic career, both of which include paintings, works on paper, and collages from the 1930s to her death.

Deborah Colton Gallery is founded on being an innovative showcase for ongoing presentation and promotion of strong historical and visionary contemporary artists world-wide, whose diverse practices include painting, works on paper, sculpture, video, photography, performance and conceptual future media installations. The gallery aspires to provide a forum through connecting Texas, national and international artists.

Pictured above: Dorothy Hood, Untitled, Circa 1985,  Oil on canvas, 70 x 60 inches.