American modernist Dorothy Antoinette “Toni” LaSelle (born 1901, Beatrice, Nebraska, died 2002 Denton, TX) grew up in the American Midwest, far from the prevailing 20th century cultural hubs. She was nevertheless a voracious and intuitive student of modernism, profoundly influenced by images of Post-Impressionism and Cubism she studied in university. From 1928–1972, she lived in Denton, Texas, and taught art and design at what is now known as Texas Woman’s University, all the while seeking knowledge of and exposure to the burgeoning concepts and processes of modernism.

LaSelle studied with László Moholy-Nagy in the early 1940s at the New Bauhaus School in Chicago, and, starting in 1944, she spent her summers at Hans Hofmann’s School of Art in Provincetown, MA, until it closed in 1953. Toni continued to spend nearly every summer in Provincetown, where she continued to develop her own language of abstraction informed by nature, in particular the landscape of the sea.