DAVEGA

BORN: 1914 in Brooklyn, New York
MOTHER: ?
FATHER: Harry Davega
SIBLINGS: Ruth Davega and ?
MARRIED: William Becker b: 1918 d: 06 Aug 1999
CHILDREN: Jeffrey William Becker b: 18 Nov 1948
Sandra Becker b: ?
Nancy Becker b: ? d: ?
RESIDENCE: New Jersey; Vienna, Austria; Sacramento, CA; Boulder Creek, CA; St. Helena, CA.
DIED: 2001, at home in St. Helena, CA
BURIED: St. Helena, CA

Please scroll down to see some of Dorothy's sculpture.

Dorothy was born in Brooklyn and grew up in northern New Jersey near Newark.

Dorothy wrote the following words and placed them into several family tree/photo albums that she gave to everyone in her family. She is the inspiration for this website.

"It was a well to do family with several servants and two grandparents in the residence. Harry Davega's ideas about raising his 3 daughters included a vegetarian diet, sunbaths (running around without any clothes on), Montesorri equipment, boy's toys, such as workbenches, electric trains, erector sets, as well as dolls and doll houses, and progressive school education far better than anything we have seen since boys and girls shared shop classes and playgrounds. We learned by doing - playing store, giving plays, putting together a newspaper, making books. The children had paints and clay from early childhood and I early on leaned toward being an artist though I most wanted to be a mother. I was not too keen on the equal rights for women to have careers bit. But I went to art school at 16, to Europe at 17 where I studied art again. There followed several years of illness and interrupted education till I went to New College and met Bill Becker. Then I did get to raise a family, and only when Jeffrey was in high school did I find any urge to go back to art. Seven units short of a Master's in Art at Sacramento State, we moved to San Francisco and I began selling my sculpture instead of studying it. I am fortunate these past thirteen years to have had galleries handling my work and my good friend Bill Granizo promoting it, so all I have had to do is produce it. My production was interrupted for awhile by Nancy's illness and death and my own bout with cancer. My life now is by no means devoted to art. I love gardening even more, and love our place in St. Helena and being with our grandchildren as they grow up. Most of all I love living with Bill. It has not been an easy life. The loss of our daughter Nancy at 26 simultaneously with my bout with cancer was perhaps the hardest time. But at 65 I am a happy person." - Dorothy,1979

CLICK ON ANY PHOTO FOR AN ENLARGEMENT

  The following was written by Dorothy about herself and her work:

Most of the sculpture we see today reflects the existentialists view of the world as absurd. Absurdity, like beauty - and meaning - is in the eye of the beholder. From where I stand, everywhere I see human beings striving to make meaningful lives in an absurd world. (I do not mean to imply that the universe is absurd. To me the absurdity appears strictly manmade.) So what my sculpture is all about is: What are people all about? Since the human body seems to me to provide the most direct form through which to express the infinite range of human circumstance, I have chosen it as a vehicle of my art - abstracting, simplifying, until I find the lines and planes and movements which are essential to the concept I have in mind. I find my ideas in news photos, in dreams, in archetypal images, among friends and family experiences. The forms you see here ask for direct gut response unmediated by verbal explanations or titles. Leave yourself open to feel at an emotional/physical level whatever it is the sculpture says - to you... lives in an absurd world. (I do not mean to imply that the universe is absurd. To me the absurdity appears strictly manmade.) So what my sculpture is all about is: What are people all about?
Since the human body seems to me to provide the most direct form through which to express the infinite range of human circumstance, I have chosen it as a vehicle of my art - abstracting, simplifying, until I find the lines and planes and movements which are essential to the concept I have in mind. I find my ideas in news photos, in dreams, in archetypal images, among friends and family experiences. The forms you see here ask for a direct gut response unmediated by verbal explanations or titles. Leave yourself open to feel at an emotional/physical level whatever it is the sculpture says - to you..
I was born in Brooklyn in 1914; grew up in the hills of northern New Jersey. I began to use paints and clay before I went to school, and can't remember when I, at least, did not consider myself an artist. At 16 I entered the Cleveland School of Art , then went to Vienna, where I studied with Franz Cisek - who did his best to unteach me everything I had learned in art school. In 1939 I got a degree in art education from New College, Columbia University, but I never taught. In 1940 I married Bill Becker, a fellow New College graduate, and for the next few years we worked for the lusty young labor movement, Bill as a writer and organizer, I doing cartoons for the Labor press, posters, murals,and films. In 1950 we came to Calif. and settled in the foothills above Porterville. I was fully occupied raising our family while Bill organized farm workers. The only art work I did in those days was birth announcements and Christmas cards! In 1963 we found ourselves in Sacramento. Our children were grown and in fact two of them were going to Sacramento State College, so I decided to go back to school with them. I studied ceramics and sculpture with Ruth Rippon. I had done some ceramic sculpture in college, but at that time I considered myself a painter. Now I found sculpture a very congenial medium. When Bill's work took us to San Francisco, a few units short of my MA, I decided to try to sell my work. I made up an album and peddled it around for one day. The Galerie de Tours took it and there I have been ever since. My work is now at the Harcourt Gallery Powell St. San Francisco."