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Study for Seraphim: Love

1982
Not on view
The precisely folded forms shaped out of slick vellum reflect Rockburne’s longstanding interest in Reimannian geometry, harmonic intervals, and topographical theory, which she first encountered while a student at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s. Rockburne wrote, "paper has two sides, it has a front and a back, and it has depth," a physical presence she enhanced through overlapping forms and gestural brushstrokes of paint. Yet this work is also ethereal and transcendent, as it is part of a series inspired by the fifteenth-century Italian artist Fra Angelico. The origami-like folds evoke the abstract wings and robes of his painted angels while emphasizing the incorporeal and otherworldly status of the seraphim, as complex and multifaceted as love.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Study for Seraphim: Love
  • Artist: Dorothea Rockburne (American, born Montreal, Canada 1932)
  • Date: 1982
  • Medium: Watercolor on vellum
  • Dimensions: 37 1/2 × 38 9/16 in. (95.3 × 97.9 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Louis and Bessie Adler Foundation Inc. Gift, 1983
  • Object Number: 1983.19
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

More Artwork

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Untitled from Locus, Dorothea Rockburne American, Relief etching and aquatint with graphite and white oil paint on folded Strathmore rag paper
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Gray and Brass
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Still Life with Flowers, a Snail and Insects, Joris Hoefnagel Netherlandish, Watercolor, gouache, and shell gold on vellum
Still Life with Flowers, a Snail and Insects
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1589
Necklace, Meta Overbeck American, Gold, emeralds, Montana sapphires, topazes, enamel, American
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Study of Capers, Gorse, and a Beetle, Maria Sibylla Merian German, Watercolor, white gouache, on vellum
Study of Capers, Gorse, and a Beetle
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