"I would like to make something that is real in itself," [Arthur Dove] once wrote, "that does not remind anyone of any other thing, and that does not have to be explained like the letter A, for instance." And so, in a sense, he did. For Dove was the first American artist to paint a completely abstract picture, or rather a set of six; he did this in or around 1910, perhaps a little before Wassily Kandinsky's first abstract compositions. Dove's work was all about nature, from beginning to end. The son of a well-off brickmaker in Geneva, New York, he began his art career as an illustrator for the New York press and went, in 1907, on a year-and-a-half trip to Europe... [Read More]