American Modernists

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

This grouping features pivotal works by some of the most renowned American modernists of the early 20th century. Comprising two canvases, October is—by the standard of Arthur Dove—almost mural-like in its size and was painted at a critical juncture in his career, during which he studiously experimented with waxes, varnishes, and resins to "try to make oil paint beautiful in itself." Joseph Stella’s 1924 Dance of Spring (Song of the Birds) is immediately recognizable as one of the works in which the artist blended floral, zoomorphic, and Christian imagery, a style he inaugurated in 1919 with Tree of Life. While Arthur B. Davies’ Interwoven is the grouping’s earliest work, it represents a forward leap in the artist’s career, who began to deliberately engage with Cubism’s exploration of space and motion in the wake of the 1913 Armory Show.

Sources: Debra Bricker Balken, ed., Arthur Dove: A Retrospective (MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997), 104.