Adaline Kent

Adaline Dutton Kent (August 7, 1900 – March 24, 1957) also known as Adaline Kent Howard, was an American sculptor from California. She created abstract sculptures with forms inspired by the natural landscape.

Early life and education Kent was born on August 7, 1900 in Kentfield, California, one of seven children of women's rights activist Elizabeth Thacher Kent and U.S. congressman William Kent. Her grandfather, Albert Emmett Kent, had purchased an 800-acre farm in 1871, which later became the town of Kentfield. She studied in Paris with Antoine Bourdelle at the Grande Chaumiere. They had two daughters, Ellen (May 1931 – Oct 1987) and Galen (born April 1933).

Work The first fifteen years of her career her art focused on the human body. She loved the fact that sculpting the human body offered anyone to have their own personal interpretation to the craft. According to Kent, there is no awkwardness to the human body and its representation is not subjective to anyone other than the creator. Kent also felt comfortable with taking ideas from the human form because our bodies are familiar and easy to shape into various artistic position. This foundation in the form of the human body led her to discover her true passion of creating works of art that dealt with the flow of nature.

Kent loved to hike and explore various trails in the Sierra Mountains.

Death and legacy On March 24, 1957, Kent died in an accident while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway in Marin County.

Adaline Kent was an alumna and a former board member (1947–1957) of the San Francisco Art Institute, and left it $10,000 to establish an annual award for promising artists from California. The prize was awarded from 1957 to 2005. Winners included Ron Nagle (1978), Wally Hedrick (1985), David Ireland (1987), Mildred Howard (1991), Clare Rojas (2004), and the last recipient, Scott Williams (2005).

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions 1934 – San Francisco Art Center, San Francisco, California; 1941 – Courvoisier Gallery, San Francisco, California; 1937, 1948, 1958 – San Francisco Museum of Art (now called San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or SFMoMA), San Francisco, California; 1953 – Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California; 1955 – California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California.

Group exhibitions

1951 – Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York 1995 – Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art, 1934–1957, group exhibition, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California; including artists Kent, Clay Spohn, Wolfgang Paalen, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Ruth Bernhard, John Gutmann, Edward Weston, Knud Merrild 2010 – 75 Years of Looking Forward, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), San Francisco, California.