Space Divided by Line Motive

Artist: Arthur Dove (American, 1880–1946)

Original Dimensions: 24" x 32"

Location: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

About Artwork:  (1943) "Living and working on Long Island, Arthur Dove always tied his images to the land and sea he loved, calling them “extractions” from nature. Nonetheless, his works became increasingly abstract during the 1940s. In Space Divided by Line Motive, 13 interlocking planes of opaque, saturated color—bright red and blue contrasting with tones of olive green, ocher, and brownish plum—animate and unite the composition. The artist’s title for the painting may refer to the straight, undulating, curvy, and jagged lines that divide these spaces of color. The overall positive-negative effect conveys a strong sense of movement across the canvas’s surface, as if to suggest a seismic shifting of tectonic plates. This interest in shifting planes of color recalls the artist's 1913 statement that he “remember[ed] certain sensations purely through their form and color . . . by certain shapes, planes of light, or character lines determined by the meeting of such planes.”

Dove belonged to a pioneering group of artists whose increasingly abstract style radically changed the course of American art. A protégé of the influential promoter of modern art Alfred Stieglitz, who showed Dove’s work and gave him his first solo exhibition, Dove nonetheless struggled to attain critical success and was never financially stable. Even Stieglitz noted that some of his paintings were “above the heads of the people.”" - (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)