Car across the Street

About this artwork

Dove suffered from various illnesses that kept him housebound for weeks at a time. Nevertheless he painted the world that was visible from his glass-enclosed front porch. For a painter inspired by nature, this confinement was frustrating, but Dove transformed the nearby activity into imaginative compositions. In this watercolor, he created a colorful, visually exciting scene from an otherwise banal subject, the neighbor’s car. Defined by only two black lines, the car seems to merge with the su...

About the Artist

Arthur Dove

Arthur Garfield Dove (1880–1946) was an American painter widely regarded as one of the first artists to create fully abstract works in the United States, a pioneer whose lyrical, nature-inspired abstractions gave American modernism a distinctly organic and spiritual character. Born in Canandaigua, New York, Dove initially worked as a commercial illustrator before traveling to Europe in 1907–1909, ...