FILTER RESULTS
Cars in a Sleet Storm
193820th Century
15 x 21 in. (38.1 x 53.3 cm)
Arthur Dove (Canandaigua, NY, 1880 - 1946, Long Island, NY)
Object Type:
Painting
Medium and Support:
Oil on canvas
Credit Line:
Marion Stratton Gould Fund
Accession Number:
1951.4
Media
-
Director Emeritus Grant Holcomb speaks about this object.
Transcript
Arthur Dove was one of the pioneers of abstract art in America. Little interested in descriptive detail or fact, he used color, shape, line and form to suggest and express the personal sensations that he found and felt in nature.
Having visited Paris in 1908, he became familiar with the dynamic new trends that were emerging in modern painting, from Cezanne to Matisse. And, perhaps, he was familiar with Maurice Denis’ statement about painting… he wrote: “before being a war horse, a nude woman or some anecdote,” a painting “is essentially a flat surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order.” That is certainly the direction that characterized Dove’s art from 1908 on.
Born in Canandaigua and a student at both Hobart College and Cornell University, Dove was keenly familiar with the winters in western New York. Here, in what critics have called “a small masterpiece,” we notice (or we sense) vague, yet familiar references to a car traveling through a winter landscape. Glowing circles convey a car’s headlights; rounded forms echo the lines of the rolling hills; and the cold, muted colors underscore the familiar cold and icy conditions in this part of the country.