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Robert Motherwell

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Robert MotherwellAmerican, 1915 - 1991

Motherwell was a major figure of the Abstract Expressionist generation, his work encompassing the automatism of the Surrealists, the expressive brushworks of action painting, and the saturated hues of field painting. Motherwell began his career as a painter in 1938-39, after a trip to Paris and studied art history from 1940 to 1941 in New York. There he met Roberto Matta and other exiled European artists associated with Surrealism. Emotionally charged brushwork and severely structured abstract were painted during this period, but in 1943, Motherwell produced a series of dark, menacing works in Response to World War II. The work for which he is best known, the series "Elegy to the Spanish Republic XXXIV" (1953-1954), are large abstracts that reflect his generation's despair at the lost cause of the Spanish Civil War. During the 1950s, Motherwell spent most of his time lecturing and teaching, notably at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It was during this time he worked on his most influential literary achievement, "The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology" (New York, 1951). From 1968 to 1972, Mortherwell worked on a series of paintings called "Open," which reflected the new style of color field painting. His later works returned to more traditional Abstract Expressionist vocabulary. (ULAN 2006)

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