Collections: American Art: Deer and Cactus

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This image is presented as a "thumbnail" because it is protected by copyright. The Brooklyn Museum respects the rights of artists who retain the copyright to their work.

Deer and Cactus

The Danish-born modernist Kai Gotzsche painted this work in the American Southwest, where he spent time in the 1920s, often in the company of the writer D. H. Lawrence and a fellow Danish painter, Knud Merrild, at the Taos home of the art patron Mabel Dodge. Abstracted in a decorative manner, with simplified forms and echoes of a few key shapes, the composition is in keeping with the elegant Art Deco style that was internationally popular by the mid-1920s, particularly in architecture, decorative arts, and graphics.


• Artist: Kai Gotzsche, American, born Denmark, 1886
• Medium: Watercolor over graphite with some gold paint on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream, wove, hand-made Whatman paper
• Place Made: USA
• Dates: ca. 1926
• Dimensions: 30 1/8 x 22 1/4 in. (76.5 x 56.5 cm) Frame: 36 1/8 x 28 1/16 x 1 3/4 in. (91.8 x 71.3 x 4.4 cm)
• Markings: Along left side, watermark "J WHATMAN 19[?]3 ENGLAND" and countermark "B"
• Collections: American Art
• Museum Location: This item is not on view
• Accession Number: 29.1389
• Credit Line: Museum Collection Fund
• Image: Overall, 29.1389_PS2.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2005
Kai Gotzsche (American, born Denmark, 1886). Deer and Cactus, ca. 1926. Watercolor over graphite with some gold paint on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream, wove, hand-made Whatman paper, 30 1/8 x 22 1/4 in. (76.5 x 56.5 cm) Frame: 36 1/8 x 28 1/16 x 1 3/4 in. (91.8 x 71.3 x 4.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 29.1389 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 29.1389_PS2.jpg)