Arthur Dove

Sunset

Arthur Dove vigorously explored abstraction in the early twentieth century. In Sunset, Dove depicts the landscape from his family farm in upstate New York in Geneva. The painting features the circle as the dominant form of the arrangement along with vibrant colors and organic architectural shapes. Dove’s abstract images make direct references to the natural world drawn from the artist’s memory and experience.

Dove summarized his aspiration: “I would like to make something that is real in itself, that does not remind anyone of any other thing, and that does not have to be explained.”

As a member of the legendary Stieglitz Circle, Dove was a leading figure in the New York modernism art scene and influenced later abstract landscape painters. Deeply inspired by his abstract naturalism, his contemporary artist Georgia O’Keeffe declared, “Dove is the only American painter who is of the earth.”