Walt Dehner Young Palms Puerto Rico Original Pencil Signed Lithograph Small Edition of 25 c. 1935 Unmatted, Unframed

Title: Young Palms
Artist: Walter Dehner (1898-1955)
Technique: Original Stone Lithograph
Size: Image - 10 x 14-1/4 inches, Sheet - 16 x 22-4/5 inches
Date Printed: c. 1935
Edition Size: Limited Edition of 25. This one is No. 5.
Signed: Signed, titled, and numbered in pencil by the artist, and signed in the stone.
References: From the personal estate collection of American artist and printmaker Will Barnet.
Condition: Very Good condition with some soft creases along the top margin and a few spots in the bottom margin well away from the image.
Impression: A strong impression printed by Will Barnet on white wove paper at the Art Students League in New York.
Presentation: Unmatted and unframed. Blank on the back, not laid down. Because of it size we will safely roll this print and ship it in a sturdy tube.

Walt Dehner was a painter, lithographer, and photographer who was Director of Art at the University of Puerto Rico from 1928-48. His extensive art training also included time at the Art Students League in New York where he studied with well known American artist George Bellows and Will Barnet.

This flowing lithograph of young palm trees swaying in the tropical breeze was printed by Barnet at the League in the 1930s and was part of his personal collection.

This bold and well composed work has the look of a wash drawing, a technique that other artists learned under Barnet at the League. It was drawn directly on the stone.

Aware of the limitations of the Puerto Rico’s artistic milieu, Dehner did what he could to encourage and support Puerto Rican artists. In 1933 he organized an exhibit featuring 300 works by island born and foreign born artists.

It was the first of its kind in Puerto Rico to exhibit works on loan. Among the works shown were prints by Rockwell Kent, Wanda Gag, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, George Biddle, Martin Lewis, and Mabel Dwight, as well as other artists.

A painter and teacher, Walt Dehner was Director of Art at the University of Puerto Rico from 1928-48, and in 1946, was Artist in Residence at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

His education included the Universities of Michigan and Illinois, Ohio State, Harvard and Columbia and the Art Students League in Manhattan, where he was a student of George Bellows. He also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with Daniel Garber and Hugh Breckenridge and the Boston Museum School of the Fine Arts.

In 1930 the Babcock galleries in New York had an exhibition of watercolors by Dehner of Italy, Puerto Rico, and the West Indies.