Robert Motherwell
Born – Aberdeen, USA 1915
Died – New York City, USA 1991
Robert Motherwell was unusual among the New York artists in that he was a true academic, possessing a rational mind that has suffused his art with an ordered, contemplative stillness. He had studied philosophy before embarking on serious artistic studies in the form of art history at Columbia University. He became a professional painter in 1941, after having become acquainted with the Surrealists and involved in their work, Roberto Matta’s in particular. Motherwell is credited with being one of the initiators of the Abstract Expressionist movement. The informal art school he founded with fellow painters, Mark Rothko among them, called The Subjects of the Artist, was a significant development. The concerns of the Symbolists were of interest to Motherwell and his own work appropriates their ideology if equivalencies between colour, sound, sensation and memory. Beyond his extensive series of Elegy paintings, including Elegy to the Spanish Republic 34, his tranquil abstracts, such as Open No. 122 in Scarlet + Blue, are described by the artist as, “not hard-edge paintings, but romantic ones – essences.”
Masterpieces:
- Elegy to the Spanish Republic 34
- USA Open No. 121 (Bolton Landing Elegy)
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.