Dorothea E. Lau (1916 - ?)

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Dorothea Lau was born in 1916 in Star Prairie, Wisconsin and she was active in the 1930s and early 1940s as a painter and printmaker. 

 

The 1930 federal census records her living with her mother on Fremont Avenue South in Minneapolis.  She is listed as a stenographer in the 1938 census; this job might have been the way that she earned money for tuition at the Minneapolis College of Art, which she attended from 1936 to 1938.  

 

She exhibited paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1937, 1938 and 1939 while still a student.  By 1939 the Minneapolis City Directory lists her occupation as “artist.”  Lau entered the exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for three years and in 1940 she was selected to participate in the WPA (Works Progress Project) Federal Art Project in Minnesota, where she produced a serious of multicolor lithographs and oil paintings of Minneapolis scenes. 

 

Her work is in collections at the Minnesota Historical Society and the Central Lakes College WPA Federal Art Project collection.