Arthur Garfield Dove

Arthur Garfield Dove , 1880-1946, American painter, b. Canandaigua, N.Y. Early in his career he did commercial illustration in New York City. Following a European trip (1907-9), he adopted an abstract style that flowered in the 1930s into fluid, poetic canvases based on forms in nature. Dove has subsequently been recognized as a precursor of the abstract expressionists. Examples of his work are Rise of the Full Moon and Pozzuoli Red (Phillips Gall., Washington, D.C.).

Dove, Arthur (1880–1946). American painter, a pioneer of abstract art. He was born in Canandaigua, New York State, studied law and art at Cornell University, graduating in 1903, then settled in New York City. For most of his career he earned his living as a commercial illustrator and he was often in great financial difficulty, even though he was championed by Stieglitz and later supported by Duncan Phillips, who from 1930 paid him a regular monthly stipend. He visited Europe in 1907–9, coming into contact with Fauvism and other avant-garde movements, and in 1910 he painted the first abstract pictures in American art (Abstraction No. 1–Abstraction No. 6, private collection), which are somewhat similar to Kandinsky's work of about the same date. Dove never exhibited these pictures in his lifetime, but he displayed similar works in his first one-man exhibition at Stieglitz's 291 Gallery in 1912. These abstracts are based on natural forms, suggesting the rhythms of nature through pulsating shapes (Sand Barge, Phillips Collection, Washington, 1930); Dove wrote ‘I should like to take wind and water and sand as a motif and work with them, but it has to be simplified in most cases to color and force lines and substances just as music has done with sound'. From the mid1930s the vestiges of representation in his work began to disappear and in the the 1940s he experimented with a more geometric, hard-edged type of abstraction (That Red One, William H. Lane Foundation, Leominster, Massachusetts, 1944). Throughout his career Dove also made collages, among them Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz (MOMA, New York, 1925), which features a camera lens and a photographic plate amongst other objects. In his later years he took a leading part in a campaign to win artists royalty rights for the reproduction of their work. From 1924 Dove was married to the painter Helen Torr (1886–1967).

Dove, Arthur (1880–1946). American painter, a pioneer of abstract art. For most of his career he earned his living as a commercial illustrator and he was often in great financial difficulty (even though he was supported by Stieglitz and Duncan Phillips). He visited Europe in 1907–9, coming into contact with Fauvism and other avant-garde movements, and in 1910 he painted the first abstract pictures in American art (Abstraction No 1–Abstraction No 6, priv. coll.), which are somewhat similar to Kandinsky's work of the same time. He never exhibited these in his lifetime, but he displayed similar work at his first one-man exhibition at Stieglitz's 291 Galley in 1912. Typically his abstractions are based on organic forms, suggesting the rhythms of nature with their pulsating shapes (Sand Barge, 1930, Phillips Coll., Washington). During the 1940s he experimented with a more geometric type of abstraction (That Red One, 1944, William H. Lane Foundation, Leominster, Mass.). In his later years he took a leading part in the campaign to win artists royalty rights for the reproduction of their work.