The first book to focus exclusively on the luminous watercolors and pastels of the American artist Arthur Dove (1880-1946), this volume explores the contributions of these mediums to the development of Dove's distinctive,abstract images of the American landscape.While the pastels and watercolors of his colleagues and friends in Alfred Stieglitz's circle are well known, Dove's forays into these mediums, particularly his watercolors of the 1930s and 1940s, have never before been fully integrated into his own work. Crucial to his own development, Dove's pastels and watercolors are also significant in the history of modern painting in America.

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The first book to focus exclusively on the luminous watercolors and pastels of the American artist Arthur Dove (1880-1946), this volume explores the contributions of these mediums to the development of Dove's distinctive,abstract images of the American landscape.While the pastels and watercolors of his colleagues and friends in Alfred Stieglitz's circle are well known, Dove's forays into these mediums, particularly his watercolors of the 1930s and 1940s, have never before been fully integrated into his own work. Crucial to his own development, Dove's pastels and watercolors are also significant in the history of modern painting in America.

Dove's landmark pastel series of 1911-12,The Ten Commandments, represents American modernism's first breakthrough into abstraction. His subsequent pastels of the 1910s and 1920s provided him with stylistic innovations he later adapted in his oil paintings.

Watercolor became the primary medium of Dove's summer months in the early 1930s and remained so throughout his career. These small, exquisite images, rapidly executed in the woods, on his boat, on the train, or even from his porch, record his spontaneous responses to nature and reveal his immediate,incisive transformation of what he saw into delicately balanced compositions. Ms.Kirschner considers the role of these works and of the watercolor medium itself in Dove's stylistic growth in the second half of his career. While some of these watercolors will seem familiar to those acquainted with Dove's work, many have never before been published.

The importance of Dove's watercolors has been increasingly recognized in recent years in several small exhibitions. Bringing together watercolors and pastels from collections across the country, this book will be of deep interest to both scholars and admirers of twentieth-century American art.

ARTHUR DOVE - Watercolors and Pastels

Notes

Plates

Selected Bibliography

List of Illustrations