Dorothy Dehner, born in Cleveland, Ohio, didn't venture into sculpture until 1955, when she was fifty-four years old. During her teenage years, she received artistic guidance from three artistically inclined aunts and also studied dance with a former member of the Denishawn Company, a modern dance troupe and school. Unfortunately, by the age of eighteen, she had lost both of her parents and her only sister. She then moved to California to study acting, attending classes at the Pasadena Playhouse and majoring in drama at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the mid-1920s, Dehner relocated to New York, where she furthered her artistic education at the Art Students League and crossed paths with various artists, most notably David Smith. In 1927, she married Smith, and they settled in Brooklyn.
In 1929, Smith purchased an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Bolton Landing, upstate New York, where they spent their summers before permanently moving there in 1940. Throughout their marriage, Dehner engaged in drawing, painting, and group exhibitions. She also managed their household, provided assistance to Smith in his work, and offered guidance on his sculptures. In 1948, Smith translated one of her drawings, titled "Star Cage," into a sculpture. Despite her passionate pursuit of art, her career aspirations often took a backseat to those of her husband, who could be demanding and domineering at times. Dehner used two series of drawings, "Life on the Farm" (depicting idyllic scenes of everyday life) and "Damnation Series" (featuring demonic figures surrounded by vultures and bats), to express her conflicted feelings about Bolton Landing and their marriage. Only in later years did she realize that these drawings conveyed the increasing psychological discomfort she experienced in the later stages of their marriage.
In 1951, Dehner divorced Smith, left Bolton Landing, and returned to New York City. She pursued painting at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17, where she crossed paths with sculptors Louise Nevelson and David Slivka. In 1953, her work was featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Dehner's sculpting journey began in 1955, and her initial sculptures were small, surrealistic bronzes influenced by the lost-wax process. According to her, "I was never taught sculpture at all; nobody told me anything. I didn't need it. The minute I had the wax in my hands, I knew what to do." Her work quickly gained recognition, leading to a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1955 and her inclusion in the prestigious Willard Gallery in 1957.
Throughout her career, Dehner intermittently worked in bronze, but in the 1960s, she also ventured into other artistic media. Over the years, her work grew in scale. After her second husband's death in 1974, she began crafting wood sculptures as tall as ten feet and, with the help of a fabricator, produced large-scale works in Corten steel. Like the painter Alma Thomas, Dehner discovered her artistic voice later in life. Similar to Thomas, she made up for lost time by earning recognition, awards, and maintaining prolific output until she tragically lost her sight due to a pharmacist's error shortly before her death. She also served as a visiting artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1970-1971. In 1981, Skidmore College honored her with an honorary doctorate, and in the following year, she received an award from the Women's Caucus. Major retrospectives of her work were held at the Jewish Museum in New York (1965), City University of New York (1991), the Katonah Museum of Art (1993), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (1995).