Robert Motherwell

Two Figures No. 12

1958

Robert Motherwell Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 60 1960 Oil on paperboard 17.8 x 23.8 cms (7 x 9 3/8 ins) RM14624 W111 Provenance: Harriet Mnuchin Weiner, 1961. Christie's, New ...

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) Untitled 1990 Acrylic and coloured pencil on panel 40.6 x 50.8 cms (16 x 20 ins) RM13143 P1195 The composition of this painting is based on the left ...

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...

Robert Motherwell Homage to Catalonia 1985 Acrylic on canvas 61 x 91.4 cms (24 x 36 ins) RM14749 P1116 This painting was begun in 1985 as a work from the Hollow Men series. By 1986 ...

Color screenprint on J. B. Green paper, 1970-71. Initialed by the artist and numbered 123/150 in pencil, lower right. Printed by Kelpra Studio, London. Published by Marlborough Gra...

A very good impression of this color lithograph on TGL handmade paper. Initialed and numbered 6/40 in pencil. Printed and published by Tyler Graphics, Ltd., Mount Kisco, with the bli...

A very good impression of this color screenprint on J. B. Green paper. Initialed and numbered 96/150 in pencil by Motherwell. Printed by Kelpra Studio, London. Published by Marlborou...

Originally produced for the 1981 art show at Navy Pier in Chicago, these posters were part of an estimated edition size of about 2,000. The cropped version is particularly rare, as i...