Robert MotherwellPalo Alto1978
1978
About the Item
- Creator:Robert Motherwell (1915-1991, American)
- Creation Year:1978
- Dimensions:Height: 35.5 in (90.17 cm)Width: 24 in (60.96 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Mild toning in the margins. Overall very good condition.
- Gallery Location:Toronto, CA
- Reference Number:
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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- America-La France Variations VIBy Robert MotherwellLocated in Toronto, OntarioRobert Motherwell (1915-1991), alongside Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, made up the quartet of American abstract painters that radically defined abstraction and...Category
1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Summertime in Italy (With Lines)By Robert MotherwellLocated in Toronto, OntarioRobert Motherwell (1915-1991), alongside Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, made up the quartet of American abstract painters that radically defined abstraction and established New York City as the center of the art world for the second half of the 20th century. Motherwell was also the unofficial spokesman of the New York School, writing, teaching, and lecturing on behalf of the movement, his fellow artists, and the merits of abstraction. His work appears in museum collections around the world and is instantly recognizable for its boldness and black forms. Yet in addition to his impressive paintings, Motherwell is also revered as a printmaker. He is one of the most innovative and prolific printmakers of the 20th century. He was always searching for new techniques, whether at his own printmaking atelier or collaborating with others, to expand his ideas and express his aesthetic. In the 1960s, Motherwell visited Italy on vacation with his then-wife, Helen Frankenthaler. Motherwell became enamoured with the Italianate landscape and the mountainous terrain of the Liguria region, which inspired a series of paintings, "Summertime in Italy...Category
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MaterialsLithograph
- America La France Variations IIIBy Robert MotherwellLocated in Toronto, OntarioRobert Motherwell (1915-1991) is one of the essential American abstract painters who radically defined post-war abstraction in New York City. Today, his work appears in museum colle...Category
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