Robert Motherwell, “Spanish Elegy”, Lithograph, size , 25 3/8 x 21 3/8 inches, printed in black on Chine Appliqué and red Japanese Gampi paper mounted on white Arches Wove Paper
Robert 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.
At the age of eleven, Robert Motherwell was awarded a fellowship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, and went on to the California School of Fine Arts in 1932. He received his BA in philosophy from Stanford University in 1936. Beginning his career as a painter in 1939 in Paris, he had his first solo exhibition of his work. Motherwell returned to the United States and studied art history at the Columbia University from 1940 to 1941.
It was there that Matherwell met Roberto Matta, Meyer Schapiro, 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” published in New York in 1951.
In 1952, Robert Motherwell and abstract painter Ad Reinhardt produced the journal “Modern Artists in America.” Motherwell was married to Helen Frankenthaler, also an abstract artist, from 1958 to 1971. During the years 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 the more traditional Abstract Expressionist style.