Arthur Garfield Dove

Arthur Garfield Dove was a pioneering American artist often credited as one of the first abstract painters in the United States. Born in 1880 in Canandaigua, New York, Dove’s innovative work laid the foundation for American modernism and significantly influenced the direction of 20th-century art.

Dove initially pursued a career in law, but his passion for art led him to study at Cornell University under landscape artist William Sartain. After graduation, he moved to New York City and became involved in the burgeoning art scene. Early in his career, Dove worked as a commercial illustrator, but his artistic ambitions soon led him to Europe.

In Paris, Dove was exposed to the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century, including Fauvism and Cubism. These experiences profoundly influenced his artistic style, pushing him towards abstraction. Upon returning to the United States, Dove began to develop his unique approach to art, focusing on the essence of natural forms rather than their literal representation.

There he was introduced to influential photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, who became a lifelong supporter and advocate of his work. Along with painters Georgia O’Keeffe, Marden Hartley, Charles Demuth, John Marin and the photographer Paul Strand, Dove became part of the Stieglitz Circle and his works were exhibited at various renditions of Stieglitz’s galleries such as The Intimate Gallery and An American Place.

Arthur Dove drew inspiration from nature, creating works that conveyed the rhythms and energies of the natural world. His innovative use of materials, including wax emulsion and casein, allowed him to achieve unique textures and effects in his paintings. Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe shared a commitment and spiritual connection to nature, which led to a mutual admiration of one another’s work and a lifelong artistic dialogue.

Dove achieved his groundbreaking style through abstracting natural forms into a series of shapes, colours and lines that appeared as central motifs in his Modernist works. These can be found in one of his masterpieces, Sunset (1935), which sold for a world record price of US$7,802,500 at Christie’s in 2021. Dove’s interpretation of representative forms into emotionally powerful, flattened shapes of colour also importantly anticipates American artists of the next generation, including Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky and Robert Motherwell.

Dove suffered from heart disease and Bright’s disease through the late 1930s. He suffered a heart attack in 1939 and his health never fully recovered. In 1946 Dove had his last show with nine new paintings and saw Stieglitz for the last time. Dove died in November that year following a second heart attack and kidney failure at the age of 66.