54 Facts About Dorothy Hood

Dorothy Hood was an American painter in the Modernist tradition.

Dorothy Hood's work is held in private collections and at several museums, most notably the Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Dorothy Hood was of German and Swedish descent, and experienced a strict, Episcopalian upbringing.

Dorothy Hood's father was a banker who often traveled out of town on business.

Hood's mother encouraged Dorothy to pursue her artistic talents, but Dorothy was raised mainly by household servants due to her mother's mental illness that resulted in long sanitarium stays.

Dorothy Hood would visit her mother at the sanitarium on school breaks.

Dorothy Hood's mother held Victorian ideals of womanhood, yet had an unconventional side which led Dorothy Hood to wonder about which side was her true mother.

Dorothy Hood often spent her vacations at vacation spas, an activity usually reserved for adults.

Dorothy Hood went to the Rhode Island School of Design on this four-year scholarship in the early 1930s.

Dorothy Hood did not feel that her formal education was sufficient for her development as an artist other than providing her with an introduction to great art and other students.

Dorothy Hood went to Mexico on what was intended to be a short vacation.

Dorothy Hood immediately fell in love with the country and its intellectual climate and aesthetic, and ended up spending twenty years in Mexico.

Dorothy Hood was considered to be good friends with Treadwell.

Dorothy Hood stayed for a time with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and had a spat with them because of a dispute that Sophie Treadwell had with Rivera, although Dorothy Hood later regretted not trying to reach out to Rivera more.

Dorothy Hood lived in meager conditions in Mexico, and her works were small in size, due in part to her small studio space.

Dorothy Hood experimented with anti-war drawings during the Spanish Civil War.

In Mexico, Dorothy Hood was met with more respect as a woman artist, and her drawings were sought after.

Dorothy Hood exhibited in 1941 at the Gama Gallery in Mexico City, which was commemorated in a poem written by Pablo Neruda, who introduced Dorothy Hood to the artist and her ultimate mentor, Jose Clemente Orozco.

Dorothy Hood returned to New York for a year's study in 1945.

John McAndrews, the curator of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art and a friend of Dorothy Hood's, showed one of her drawings to Soby.

In 1950, Dorothy Hood was awarded a solo show at the Willard Gallery in New York.

Tobey invited Dorothy Hood to show at the Ahrensberg Atelier, of which he was the director.

Dorothy Hood's work was particularly inspired by Taoism and the Yogi of Sri Aurobinda, as well asl by space exploration and outer space, which is reflected in her later works.

Dorothy Hood has cited the influence of Max Ernst on her work.

Dorothy Hood's work consisted of realist portraits and depictions of animals.

Dorothy Hood had a one-person show at the Marian Williard Gallery in New York City.

Dorothy Hood had a solo show at the Duveen-Graham Gallery in New York in 1958, and showed at the Philadelphia Art Alliance that same year.

Dorothy Hood mentored painter Ibsen Espada, who worked in her studio as a personal assistant.

Dorothy Hood focused her teaching efforts on meeting the needs of her students, something she felt was lacking from her formal art education.

Dorothy Hood taught at the Museum of Fine Arts until 1976.

Dorothy Hood had five one-person shows in major Texas museums by 1971 and won the Childe Hassam Award in 1973.

In 1975, Dorothy Hood was tasked with creating the sets for "Allen's Landing" for the bicentennial celebration of the Houston Ballet.

That same year, Dorothy Hood showed at the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi.

In 1976, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto commissioned Dorothy Hood to create the sets for their showing of "Royal Hunt of the Sun".

That same year, Dorothy Hood's work was exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf.

Dorothy Hood expressed that she felt that narrative paintings, in their adherence to time frames, miss the essence of the subject.

In 1983, Dorothy Hood's work was exhibited in the Kunstverein in Salzburg.

That same year, Dorothy Hood's work traveled to Kenya where it was shown at the UN Focus International Exhibition.

Dorothy Hood's work was highlighted at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin in 1989.

Signatures of Dorothy Hood's work are color, texture, form, line, and scale.

Dorothy Hood started with a limited palette and later began to experiment with vivid juxtapositions of color.

Dorothy Hood was drawn to a sense of place and the people who live in that place which help inform her choice of colors and imagery.

In Houston, Dorothy Hood's studio was larger than her studio in Mexico which allowed her to create larger works.

Dorothy Hood was empathetic towards lonely youth as she identified with them after her own lonely upbringing.

From 1949 to 1960, Dorothy Hood's drawings included more nature, depicting plants and animals, and became increasingly abstract with complex spatial arrangements.

Dorothy Hood began collaging in 1983,40 years into her art career.

Much like Dorothy Hood's drawings featured a multidimensional spatial framework, Her collages employed unique depictions of space and dimensions.

Dorothy Hood's collages focus on the space age and cybernetics, which Dorothy Hood felt left a vast field of information with no room for humans.

Hood created a collection of collages, such as those shown at the "Dorothy Hood Collages: Connecting Change" exhibition at the Wallace Wentworth Gallery in 1988.

Dorothy Hood received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women's Caucus for Art in 1988.

Dorothy Hood became one of Texas' most famous artists, notable as Texas had been known prior for paintings depicting prairies and cowboys.

The Dorothy Hood Papers are held at the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections in Houston, Texas.

Dorothy Hood was married to Bolivian composer, Jose Maria Velasco Maidana in 1946.

Dorothy Hood supported herself and her husband until his death in 1989.