Which American artists pioneered abstract landscape painting?

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van de Velde, Adriaen: River Landscape in the Late Afternoon — Landscape painting *River Landscape in the Late Afternoon*, oil on canvas by Adriaen van de Velde, 1663; in a private collection.

In the context of American modernism, John Marin and Arthur Dove are recognized as the primary pioneers of the abstract landscape.1

These artists were part of a broader movement of American painters, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley, who engaged deeply with landscape painting while incorporating modernist techniques. By the mid-20th century, this tradition of abstraction was further developed by artists such as Richard Diebenkorn and Helen Frankenthaler, who utilized line, color, and form to transform traditional landscape elements into suggestive, abstract representations of the natural and built world.1