Collection
/
American Art

Flat Surfaces

Arthur G. Dove

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

Flat Surfaces, Arthur G. Dove’s last major canvas, serves as a poignant summation of his longtime quest for the “elimination of the non-essential.” Basing the composition on the view of the pond from his Long Island home, he distilled the landscape into flat, hard-edged geometric shapes that approach pure abstraction.

Although an intimate of the photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s circle of modern artists, Dove preferred to live and work outside the city in proximity to nature. Considered the first American artist to produce purely nonrepresentational pictures (in 1910), he used form and color to express his deep spiritual feelings about the natural world.

Caption

Arthur G. Dove (American, 1880–1946). Flat Surfaces, 1946. Oil on canvas, 27 x 36in. (68.6 x 91.4cm) Frame: 29 1/4 x 38 x 2 1/4 in. (74.3 x 96.5 x 5.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 55.21. © Estate of Arthur G. Dove. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Collection

American Art

Title

Flat Surfaces

Date

1946

Medium

Oil on canvas

Classification

Painting

Dimensions

27 x 36in. (68.6 x 91.4cm) Frame: 29 1/4 x 38 x 2 1/4 in. (74.3 x 96.5 x 5.7 cm)

Signatures

lower center

Credit Line

Dick S. Ramsay Fund

Accession Number

55.21

Rights

© Estate of Arthur G. Dove

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Frequent Art Questions

  • What about this?

    The painting you sent is "Flat Surfaces" by the American artist Arthur Dove. Dove made it in 1946, shortly before he died.
    Dove was a contemporary to Georgia O'Keeffe. It is interesting to compare their processes of abstraction. Like O'Keeffe, Dove often worked from the landscape around him; at this time, he was living on Long Island, New York. He simplified forms so much that the original subject often isn't obvious to us!

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Artists and makers

Arthur G. Dove

3 works in the collection