Alma Woodsey Thomas

Evening Glow

1977

Modern Art, Portrait Painting, Mixed Media Portrait Art-Lost Between The Lines ABOUT THIS PIECE: “Lost Between the Lines, (Behtyie-A13)” is mixed media portrait art by Addison Jones...

Robert Motherwell Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110C 1968 Acrylic and graphite on paper 15.2 x 20.3 cms (6 x 8 ins) Robert Motherwell's Elegies series represent one of the iconic motifs of Abstract Expressionism.  Based on a 1948 ink illustration the artist executed accompanying a Harold Rosenberg poem, “A Bird for every bird,” the drawing shows the hypnotically repetitive patterning of ovoids and vertical beams.  The stark contrast of the black ink on white paper references the symbolic use of the color black by artists such as Goya, Manet and Matisse to convey death, loss, and tragedy.  Motherwell was quite affected by the turbulence of the Spanish Civil War and alludes to the Spanish republic in his Elegies. Motherwell’s plumbing the depths of poetry, history, and primordial art in the Elegies is considered a hallmark of nascent Abstract Expressionist painting in its desire to "excavate" essential imagery of mankind. Motherwell, who originally trained as a philosophy scholar and later became of the great editors of 20th century art documents, grasped very early on the crucial importance that in order to contribute meaningfully to the canon of modern art, one must create a principle of aesthetics. Through the surrealist concept of automatism, the artist finally found the creative principle that eventually governed his extraordinary artistic output and produced the Elegies, one of the most salient, immediate painterly images of 20th century abstract painting. In fact, he has alluded to the fact that each one of his Elegies begins as an automatic drawing, and certain shapes are then blocked to create the signature armature of the vertical bars and ovals. The Elegies seem to possess the power of an archetypal image, an image the mind already grasps on a subconscious level. Motherwell's play of dualities of black and white as well as other dichotomies—the geometric versus the organic, chaos versus order, death versus life—was a condition of living through a tumultuous period in American history. During an interview, he vividly recalled the 1940s as the time when society was ordered by a set of contradictions.  In Motherwell's Elegies, he not only discovered an incredibly elastic pictorial language that would communicate on multiple levels but also acknowledged these contradictions in a manner that would resonate in abstract form.  The present work served as a model for a painting, Spanish Elegy...

Charbonnet received an MFA from the University of New Orleans. He has work in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Speed M...

Charbonnet received an MFA from the University of New Orleans. He has work in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Speed M...

Charbonnet received an MFA from the University of New Orleans. He has work in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Speed M...

Charbonnet received an MFA from the University of New Orleans. He has work in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Speed M...

Charbonnet received an MFA from the University of New Orleans. He has work in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Speed M...

"Desire" is an interconnected diptych by Indian Artist Ritu Sinha. This artwork emphasis on the stories and actions of the darkest phase of independent India. The crosia work symboli...

Unique blue striped abstract painting. Acrylic and graphite on paper. Signed on top right by the artist. Offered unframed Mark Zimmermann's work is based on the fusion of meditat...

Unique blue/green striped abstract painting. Acrylic and graphite on paper. Signed on top right by the artist. Offered unframed Mark Zimmermann's work is based on the fusion of m...