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Accession #	55.21
Artist	Arthur G. Dove
Title	Flat Surfaces
Date	1946
Medium	Oil on canvas
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)
Signed	lower center
Credit Line	Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Location	Visible Storage: Case 15, Screen M (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks: 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.