ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Dorothy Dehner's early career from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s to reveal an artist who balanced an active professional life with political engagement despite cultural and personal pressures to subsume her public profile in a manner befitting contemporary societal expectations of women. According to related publicity, each worked in a different style, yet all four were united by their affiliation with the Artists Union, an organization described as having taken a "definite stand in America against War and Fascism." In the 1936 exhibition, Dehner's paintings were seen alongside more modernist-influenced prints and paintings by Smith and social-realist prints by Eugene Morley and Anton Refregier at the Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, New York. From childhood onward, Dehner absorbed a progressive attitude toward women's role in society, for, according to Marter, "Dehner came from a politically liberal family; her mother was an active suffragist, and her father had socialist sympathies."
