Dorothea Rockburne

by Alicia G. Longwell

"Born and raised in Montreal, Rockburne first studied at the city's École des Beaux-Arts with Paris-trained painters Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle. Beginning in 1950, she attended the legendary Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, where classes with Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and, perhaps most significantly, the mathematician Max Dehn, had a seminal influence on her work. With fellow students Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and John Chamberlain, she thrived in the unique cross-disciplinary curriculum at Black Mountain and brought this sense of exchange and...