Robert Motherwell Art

Robert Motherwell Roots of Abstract Art in America, from the VIP hand signed limited edition, 1966 Lithograph and offset lithograph Pencil signed and numbered 46/100 on the front Fra...

Robert Motherwell: 1915-1991. One of the most important and well listed American abstract painters of the 20th century. He has Auction records well into the millions of dollars for h...

Robert 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...

Robert Motherwell Spoleto Festival, 1968 Silkscreen on American Etching Paper Signed and numbered 71/150 in graphite pencil on the front Literature: Reference: Fig 60 in Motherwell "...

Robert Motherwell Untitled (from Portfolio 9), 1967 Lithograph, 1967 22.25 x 17.25 in. (56.52 x 43.82 cm.) Signed; lower left with artist's trademark initials; numbered, Publisher...

Lithograph on Rives BFK paper 61.6 x 43.18 cms (24 1/4 x 17 inches) Edition of 100

Robert MOTHERWELL Abstract Composition Original etching and aquatint Unsigned On Johannot vellum 37.5 x 28 cm (c. 15 x 11 inch) Published by Lazar Vernet in 1967 and limited to 200 ...

Acrylic and graphite on paper 77.5 x 55.9 cms (30 1/2 x 22 ins)

Edition of 35 75.6 x 53.7 cms (29.76 x 21.14 ins)

Open-bite etching printed in dark, brownish black on fibrous Japan paper 38 x 28 cms (14 7/8 x 11 1/8 ins) Edition of 200 in three numbered segments

44.5 x 29.25 ins (113 x 74.3 cms) Edition of 108 Signature:Signed "R. Motherwell" in pencil lower left Inscriptions:Numbered in pencil lower left; some impressions have artist's chop mark lower left Publisher:The Juilliard School...

24.25 x 17 ins (61.6 x 43.2 cms) Edition of 100 Signature Signed "Motherwell" in pencil lower right Publisher Hollander Workshop, New York Printer Irwin Hollander...

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) Open No. 45: In Blue with Brown 1969 Acrylic and charcoal on canvas 55.9 x 71.1 cms (22 x 28 ins) RM9741 P447 Exhibited: Art Galleries, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, Exhibition of Work by Newly Elected Members and Recipients of Awards, 1970, no. 55. Galerie Templon, Paris, Robert Motherwell Open...

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 Open #125: Jeannie 1969 Acrylic and charcoal on canvasboard 76.2 x 50.8 cms (30 x 20 ins) RM9796 P532 The title of this painting refers to Motherwell's elder daugh...

Robert Motherwell Automatism No. 11 1965 Ink and oil on paper 67.3 x 61.6 cms (26 1/2 x 24 1/4 ins) Part of the Beside the Sea series, a series of oil paintings influenced by Mother...

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...