DOVE, ARTHUR G.

born Aug. 2, 1880, Canandaigua, N.Y., U.S. died Nov. 23, 1946, Huntingdon, N.Y. in full Arthur Garfield Dove American painter, one of the earliest nonobjective artists. Dove graduated from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., in 1903. He began his career as a magazine illustrator, but in 190708 he traveled to Paris to study. While there he was influenced by Impressionism, the work of Paul Czanne, and Fauvism, and he exhibited twice in the Salon d'Automne. In 1909 he returned to the United States, met Alfred Stieglitz, andtogether with John Marin and Georgia O'Keeffebecame an artist whom Stieglitz championed at 291, his gallery in New York City. Dove exhibited there in 1910, by which time he had embraced abstract art. Dove's art reflected his belief that colour and form are instruments with which to express the essence beneath the physical exterior of things; his shapes are typically amorphous, his colours muted. In Foghorns, for example, he used size-graduated shapes and gradations of hue to express visually the sound of foghorns. Despite their nonobjective character, his paintings often suggest the cursive qualities of landscape and the forms of nature. Dove also created many fine, ironic collages, such as Goin' Fishin', made of a variety of materials. He had little financial success. In the 1920s he separated from his wife and child and concentrated on his painting. He found a patron in 1922 (Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.) but never found solid financial ground. He became ill in the late 1930s, but he continued to paint and produced what most critics consider to be his best work in the 1940s.