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| Arthur G. Dove, Fog Horns, 1929, oil on canvas. Collection of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Anonymous Gift, FA 1954.1 ©The Estate of Arthur G. Dove, courtesy of Terry Dintenfass, Inc. |
The influential works of 12 American modern artists — including Arthur Dove’s Fog Horns — were honored this month by the United States Postal Service with the dedication of the Modern Art in America, 1913 — 1931 stamps.
“Arthur Dove’s Fog Horns is the most renowned and historically important painting in the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center’s collection,” said FAC Museum Director Blake Milteer. “As a first generation Modern artist, Dove helped to transform the face of American art forever and Fog Horns is among the finest of his work.”
Fog Horns was painted during a period in the 1920s when Dove lived on a boat in the waters surrounding Long Island.
Yet the painting “does not depict the fog horn apparatus or the seascape as much as it represents the interpenetration of deeply echoing sound into air and land as all become shape and color in the painting,” said Milteer. “It is about a sensory experience. As Dove described it, he wished to weave disparate parts in a scene ‘into a sequence of formations rather than to form an arrangement of facts.’”
Dove’s profound contribution is celebrated in the inclusion of Fog Horns among a powerhouse selection of the artist’s contemporaries on Modern Art in America, 1913 – 1931. This beautiful USPS stamp set has been released on the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Armory Show, a groundbreaking exhibition that beaconed Modern artistic innovation in America that was organized by another prominent artist in the FAC collection, Walt Kuhn.
The other masterpieces reproduced in the Modern Art in America, 1913 – 1931 U.S. stamps include:
Fog Horns is currently on view at the FAC in the North Courtyard Gallery, Tues.–Sun., 10a–5p, alongside works by Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley.