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The Arts Intel Report

Dorothea Rockburne: The Light Shines in the Darkness and the Darkness Has Not Understood It

Dorothea Rockburne,Tropical Tan, 1967.

Until Jan 25, 2025
1 New Burlington St, London W1S 2JA, United Kingdom

In 1950, Dorothea Rockburne moved from her native Canada to North Carolina, where she entered Black Mountain College to study under the mathematician Max Dehn. While she was there she met fellow students Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Guston, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage—a heady group of daring young artists. Rockburne pivoted to painting. “I wanted very much to see the equations I was studying, so I started making them in my studio,” she has said. “I was visually solving equations.” Rockburne is now 95, and this show in London is her first European survey. There are two dozen works on view, dating from 1967 to 2013. —Elena Clavarino

Photo courtesy of Bernheim Gallery, London