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Robert MotherwellIrish Suite #61990
1990
About the Item
Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), alongside Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, made up the quartet of abstract painters that radically defined Modern painting in America and established New York City as the new center of the art world.
Motherwell was the unofficial spokesman of the New York School, writing, editing a journal, and lecturing on behalf of the movement, his fellow artists, and the merits of abstraction.
While Motherwell's contribution to the art historical canon as a painter is undisputed, his role as a printmaker is arguably just as important. From the early 1960s until his death in 1991, Motherwell worked tirelessly in search of new techniques, whether at his own printmaking atelier or collaborating with others, to expand his ideas and express his aesthetic. He was one of the most experimental and courageous printmakers of the 20th century.
While it is almost impossible to decipher any trace of figuration in Motherwell's oeuvre, he was inspired by and referenced literature, politics, and art history.
Made in one run with a single colour applied to a copper plate, this print is subtle in coloring but impactful because of Motherwell's signature approach to abstraction. Burnt sienna gestural shapes sit atop the plate's ghost, with rust-colored speckles bleeding into the negative space.
"Irish Suite" is a series of 8 prints. The group features Motherwell's signature gestural lines arranged in bold, explorative compositions in a limited color palette that is typical of Motherwell's oeuvre. This suite was completed late in the artist's life, one year before Motherwell's passing.
Prints from the Irish Suite are in the permanent collections of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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"Irish Suite #6"
1990
Etching on Twinrocker May Linen Paper
Initialed "RM" and numbered 13/15 in pencil, lower margin
From an edition of 15
17"H 15"W (sheet)
22.75"H 20.5"W (framed)
Very good condition.
This work is published in the first printed catalogue raisonné (Dedalus Foundation, 2003) under no. 507. It is also listed in the fully comprehensive Prints & Editions online catalogue raisonné, Dedalus Foudation, no. CR512.
- Creator:Robert Motherwell (1915-1991, American)
- Creation Year:1990
- Dimensions:Height: 17 in (43.18 cm)Width: 15 in (38.1 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:very good condition.
- Gallery Location:Toronto, CA
- Reference Number:Seller: 05-251stDibs: LU215216444962
Robert Motherwell
The name of painter, printmaker and writer Robert Motherwell (1915–91) is often taken as synonymous with the New York School, whose name he coined. Motherwell was the youngest of this group of Abstract Expressionists working in art, dance, poetry and music in 1950s and '60s New York City, which included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko.
Born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1915, Motherwell had perhaps the broadest and best education of any of the New York School coterie, with an extensive background in philosophy, literature and art history. He earned a BA in philosophy in 1937 from Stanford University and was working toward a PhD in the subject at Harvard when he interrupted his studies for a yearlong trip to Europe, where he fell in love with European modernism.
After returning, in 1940 he enrolled Columbia to study art history. It was there that he met a group of exiled Parisian Surrealists, and encounter that proved influential on his style. Motherwell began to integrate the idea of “automatism” — unmediated gestures that reflect deeper psychological impulses — into his work, pioneering a new form of Abstract Expressionism that came to characterize the New York School.
Works like the 1967 Beside the Sea no. 45, an acrylic on canvas, and the 1966 lithograph New York International epitomize Motherwell’s use of simple shapes in boldly contrasting colors, executed in quick, gestural strokes that occasionally evoke figures, suggesting a latent narrative despite their obvious abstraction.
Throughout his career, Motherwell taught painting at Hunter College, in New York, and at Black Mountain College, in North Carolina, where his work influenced the likes of Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg and Kenneth Noland. His influence as one of the founding fathers of American Abstract Expressionism remains profound.
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