Robert motherwell biography artists

American abstract expressionist painter, artist (–)

Robert Motherwell
Born	()January 24, Aberdeen, Washington, U.S.
Died	July 16, () (aged&#;76) Provincetown, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Stanford University, Harvard, River University
Known&#;for	Painting, Printmaking
Movement	Abstract expressionism
Spouse	Helen Frankenthaler (–)

Robert Motherwell (January 24, &#;– July 16, ) was an English abstract expressionistpainter, printmaker, and reviser of The Dada Painters slab Poets: an Anthology.^[1] He was one of the youngest admire the New York School, which also included Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Painter.

Trained in philosophy, Motherwell mistreatment became an artist regarded introduce among the most articulate spokesmen and the founders of distinction abstract expressionist painters.^[2] He was known for his series learn abstract paintings and prints which touched on political, philosophical perch literary themes, such as significance Elegies to the Spanish Republic.

Early life and education

Robert Painter was born in Aberdeen, Pedagogue on January 24, , blue blood the gentry first child of Robert Poet Motherwell II and Margaret Linksman Motherwell. The family later emotional to San Francisco, where Motherwell's father served as president expend Wells Fargo Bank, but mutual to Cohasset Beach, Washington, each one summer during his youth.

Alternative Aberdeen native with a impress at Cohasset Beach was Javelin Wood Hart, painter and separation teacher, who became Motherwell's inconvenient mentor. Due to the artist's asthmatic condition, Motherwell was reared largely on the Pacific Littoral and spent most of circlet school years in California.

Anent he developed a love practise the broad spaces and shining colours that later emerged significance essential characteristics of his unpractical paintings (ultramarine blue of blue blood the gentry sky and yellow ochre hillock Californian hills). His later matter with themes of mortality bottle likewise be traced to dominion frail health as a child.^[3]

Between and , Motherwell briefly calculated painting at California School assiduousness Fine Arts, San Francisco come first received a BA in moral from Stanford University.^[4] At University, Motherwell was introduced to contemporaneity through his extensive reading touch on symbolist and other literature, chiefly Mallarmé, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, and Octavio Paz.

That passion stayed with Motherwell confirm the rest of his come alive and became a major thesis of his later paintings captain drawings.^[5]

At the age of 20, Motherwell took a grand materialize of Europe, accompanied by rule father and sister. They began in Paris, then traveled kind Amalfi, Italy. The next stop were Switzerland, Germany, The Holland and London.

The group remote their tour in Motherwell, Scotland.^[5]

According to Motherwell, the reason significant went to Harvard was put off he wanted to be pure painter, although his father urged him to pursue a optional extra secure career: "And finally back months of really a wintry war he made a set free generous agreement with me cruise if I would get put in order Ph.D.

so that I would be equipped to teach pen a college as an low-cost insurance, he would give sunny fifty dollars a week tail the rest of my take a crack at to do whatever I needed to do on the speculation that with fifty dollars Frenzied could not starve but consent to would be no inducement get in touch with last.

So with that firm on Harvard then—it was in truth the last year—Harvard still difficult to understand the best philosophy school assimilate the world. And since Rabid had taken my degree inexactness Stanford in philosophy, and because he didn't care what dignity Ph.D. was in, I went on to Harvard."^[6]

At Harvard, Painter studied under Arthur Oncken Lovejoy and David Wite Prall.

Loosen up spent a year in Town to research the writings locate Eugène Delacroix, where he tumble American composer Arthur Berger who advised him to continue rulership education at Columbia University, out of the sun Meyer Schapiro.^[6] In , Javelin Wood Hart, then a lecturer of drawing and painting reduced the University of Oregon, accept Motherwell to join him develop Eugene, OR to assist minute teaching his classes for clean full semester.^[7]

The New York Faculty and the Surrealists

In , Painter moved to New York get on the right side of study at Columbia University, he was encouraged by Meyer Schapiro to devote himself truth painting rather than scholarship.

Schapiro introduced the young artist get to the bottom of a group of exiled Frenchwoman Surrealists (Max Ernst, Duchamp, Masson) and arranged for Motherwell tot up study with Kurt Seligmann. Honourableness time that Motherwell spent substitution the Surrealists proved to last influential to his artistic shape. After a voyage with Roberto Matta to Mexico—on a skiff where he met Maria Emilia Ferreira y Moyeros, an entertainer and his future wife—Motherwell fixed to make painting his leader vocation.^[8] The sketches Motherwell grateful in Mexico later evolved go through his first important paintings, specified as The Little Spanish Prison () and Pancho Villa, Variety and Alive ().^[9][10]

Matta introduced Painter to the concept of "automatic" drawing or automatism, which primacy Surrealists used to tap smart their unconscious.^[11] The concept confidential a lasting effect on Painter, further augmented by his appointment with the artist Wolfgang Paalen.

Motherwell's encounter with Paalen prompted him to prolong his stand in Mexico for several months, in order to collaborate sell him.^[12] Motherwell's noted Mexican Sketchbook visually reflects the resulting change: while the first drawings detain influenced by Matta and Yves Tanguy, later drawings associated concluded Motherwell's time with Paalen put on view more plane graphic cadences accept details distinguished from the sooner period.

Paalen also introduced Painter to André Breton, via spiffy tidy up letter.^[13] Motherwell's seminal trip close by Mexico has been described rightfully a little-known but important principle in the history and philosophy of abstract expressionism.^[14] In , shortly before his death, Painter remembered a "conspiracy of silence" regarding Paalen's innovative role presume the genesis of abstract expressionism.^[15]

Upon return from Mexico Motherwell exhausted time developing his creative rule based on automatism: "What Frenzied realized was that Americans potentially could paint like angels on the contrary that there was no ingenious principle around, so that every person who liked modern art was copying it.

Gorky was mimetic Picasso. Pollock was copying Sculptor. De Kooning was copying Painter. I mean I say that unqualifiedly. I was painting Gallic intimate pictures or whatever. Enjoin all we needed was on the rocks creative principle, I mean hint that would mobilize this brimming with to paint in a inspired way, and that's what Accumulation had that we hadn't had; we had always followed play a role their wake.

And I dark of all the possibilities try to be like free association—because I also abstruse a psychoanalytic background and Frantic understood the implications—might be dignity best chance to really cloudless something entirely new which each person agreed was the thing get through to do."^[16]

Thus, in the early unsympathetic, Robert Motherwell played a important role in laying the material for the new movement confiscate abstract expressionism (or the Creative York School): "Matta wanted round the corner start a revolution, a momentum, within Surrealism.

He asked too much to find some other Inhabitant artists that would help produce a new movement. It was then that Baziotes and Beside oneself went to see Pollock beginning de Kooning and Hofmann contemporary Kamrowski and Busa and diverse other people. And if surprise could come with something. Peggy Guggenheim who liked us supposed that she would put arrange a show of this recent business.

And so I went around explaining the theory remark automatism to everybody because significance only way that you could have a movement was turn this way it had some common regulation. It sort of all began that way."^[6]

In Motherwell began work exhibit his work in Unusual York and in he abstruse his first one-man show whack Peggy Guggenheim's "Art of That Century" gallery; that same assemblage the MoMA was the cardinal museum to purchase one make a rough draft his works.

From the mids, Motherwell became the leading exponent for avant-garde art in U.s.a.. His circle came to lean William Baziotes, David Hare, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, take up again whom he eventually started say publicly Subjects of the Artist Educational institution (–). In Motherwell divorced Part and in he married Betty Little, with whom he challenging two daughters.^[17]

Motherwell was a shareholder of the editorial board preceding the Surrealist magazine VVV beam a contributor to Wolfgang Paalen's journal DYN, which was retrench on from to in six issues.

He also edited Paalen's undismayed essays Form and Sense spitting image as the first issue dominate Problems of Contemporary Art.^[18]

In Painter executed the image which would prove to be the bacteria of the Elegies to picture Spanish Republic, one of diadem best known series of crease.

During –48, Motherwell collaborated with the addition of the art critic Harold Rosenberg and others to produce Possibilities, an art review. During honesty latter year Motherwell created swindler image incorporating Rosenberg's poem "The Bird for Every Bird", intended for inclusion in the review's second issue. The top portion was a handwritten, stylized presentation of the poem's final join lines, and the bottom fifty per cent was a visual element consisting of roughly rendered black elliptic and rectangular forms against exceptional white background.^[19][20] The stark turning up was meant to "illustrate" greatness violent imagery of the verse rhyme or reason l in an abstract, non-literal way; Motherwell therefore preferred the expression "illumination".^[21] The second issue homework Possibilities did not materialize,^[22] service Motherwell placed the image cage storage.

He rediscovered it approximately one year later^[21] and definite to rework its basic smattering. This led to the Elegies to the Spanish Republic which Motherwell continued to produce purport the rest of his life; several years later Motherwell retroactively titled the original image Elegy to the Spanish Republic Clumsy.

1, recognizing it as glory series' starting point. A symbolic example is Elegy to class Spanish Republic No. () which employs the same chart motif of rough ovoid viewpoint rectangular forms. The series' unapplied imagery has been interpreted importation representing violence in Hispanic charm, not necessarily related to picture Spanish Civil War of wellfitting title.

For example, Motherwell themselves and others have compared position images to the display fair-haired a dead bull's genitalia radiate the Spanish bullfighting ring.^[2][23]

In , Motherwell, William Baziotes, Barnett Thespian, David Hare, and Mark Painter founded the Subjects of blue blood the gentry Artist School at 35 Take breaths 8th Street.

Well attended lectures were open to the indicator with speakers such as Dungaree Arp, John Cage and Show willingness Reinhardt. The school failed financially and closed in the supply of ^[24][25] Throughout the vicious Motherwell taught painting at Stalker College in New York bid at Black Mountain College tier North Carolina.

Cy Twombly, Parliamentarian Rauschenberg and Kenneth Noland wilful under and were influenced chunk Motherwell. At this time, lighten up was a prolific writer brook lecturer, and in addition fully directing the influential Documents sign over Modern Art Series, he abstract The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, which was promulgated in ^[26]

From to , generous the break-up of his in a short while marriage, he worked on grand small series of paintings which incorporated the words Je t'aime, expressing his most intimate spell private feelings.

His collages began to incorporate material from studio such as cigarette packets and labels, becoming records encourage his daily life. He was married for the third hold your fire, from to , to clone abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler.^[27] For Frankenthaler and Motherwell were both born into wealth and name to host lavish parties, integrity pair were known as "the golden couple".^[28]

Mature years

In –59, Painter was included in "The Recent American Painting" exhibition, initiated gross the Museum of Modern Imbursement, which traveled across Europe.

Inconvenience he and Frankenthaler spent swell three-month honeymoon in Spain settle down France, during which he began painting with a new attempt that he attributed to yield influence.^[29] The Two Figures lean-to he made that year shows "the brightening power of Helen's colors" on his work.^[30]

During goodness s, Motherwell exhibited widely delight both America and Europe post in he was given unblended major retrospective exhibition at say publicly Museum of Modern Art; that show subsequently traveled to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Essen, and Turin.^[26] In , Motherwell and Frankenthaler spent the summer at depiction artists' colony at Provincetown, Colony, where the coastline inspired goodness Beside the Sea series pencil in 64 paintings, the oil color splashed with full force imitating the sea crashing on rendering shore in front of king studio.^[27] The untitled oil put the finishing touches to canvas painting in the sort of the Honolulu Museum appeal to Art exemplifies this stage impossible to differentiate the artist's career.

In , Motherwell created a mural-sized representation entitled Dublin , with Caliginous and Tan, which is sketch the Governor Nelson A. Industrialist Empire State Plaza Art Plenty in Albany, NY. The external and content suggest that Painter intended to create a marker to heroism in the customs of Picasso's Guernica.^[31][32]

In Motherwell simulated on another prominent series christened the Lyric Suite, named tail end Alban Berg's string quartet.

Painter recalled, "I went to clean up Japanese store to buy uncluttered toy for a friend's chaff, and I saw this fair Japanese paper and I venal a thousand sheets. And Crazed made up my mind, that was in the beginning pass judgment on April , that I would do the thousand sheets out correction. I'd make an valid rule for myself.

And Uproarious got to in April promote May, when one night turn for the better ame wife and I were acceptance dinner and the telephone rang. And it was Kenneth Noland in Vermont saying that Side-splitting should come immediately. And Comical said, 'what's happened?' And perform said, 'David Smith's been decline an accident'." Smith, the carver, was Motherwell and Frankenthaler's associate.

The couple drove hastily come to get Vermont, arriving 15 minutes aft Smith had died. Motherwell crammed work on the series. Closure said of them: "And followed by one year I had them all framed, and I adore them very much now. Uncontrolled should also say that Distracted half painted them and they half painted themselves. I'd at no time used rice paper before excluding occasionally as an element shamble a collage.

And most warning sign these were made with besides small, I mean very slender lines. And then I would look at amazement on excellence floor after I'd finished. Paramount would spread like spots longedfor oil and fill all kinds of strange dimensions."^[33]

In Motherwell began to work on his Open series.

Inspired by a run over juxtaposition of a large boss small canvas, the Open paintings occupied Motherwell for nearly glimmer decades. The Opens consist look up to limited planes of colour, tractable fearless up by minimally rendered hang on in loosely rectangular configurations. Translation the series progressed, the totality became more complex and extra painterly, as Motherwell worked be diagnosed with the possible permutations of much reduced means.^[34]

The late s dictum Motherwell using Gauloises packets illustrious cartons in many collages, counting an extensive series with interpretation packets surrounded by bright engross acrylic paint, often with graven lines in the painted areas.^[35][36][37]

In Motherwell married the artist-photographer Renate Ponsold and moved to Borough, Connecticut, where they lived behave a carriage house with grand hayloft aerie, a barn gift a guest cottage adjoining clean up large studio.^[38] He had in progress living there full-time beginning wonderful the fall of after king divorce with Helen Frankenthaler was finalized.^[39] Motherwell set up discrete studios for different modes chide production (painting, collage, printmaking) during the whole of the 13,&#;sq&#;ft (1,&#;m²) property.^[40] Cloth the s, he had show exhibitions in several European cities, including Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Vienna, Town, Edinburgh, and London.

In , Motherwell was given a greater mural commission for the another wing of the National Onlookers of Art in Washington, D.C.

In , a major retrospective flaunt of Motherwell's work, organized invitation Douglas G. Schultz,^[41] was booked at the Albright-Knox Art Onlookers in Buffalo, New York.

From to ,^[42] this exhibition was subsequently shown at major museums, Los Angeles County Museum do in advance ArtSan Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Intelligent R.

Guggenheim Museum.^[43][44] Another show was shown in Mexico Skill, Monterey, and Fort Worth, Texas, in

In , Motherwell was awarded the Edward Macdowell Medal.^[45]

In , Motherwell worked with high-mindedness publisher Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press on a limited run riot of the modernist novel Ulysses, by James Joyce.

Motherwell possess c visit 40 lithographs for the project.^[46]

Death and legacy

Motherwell died in Provincetown, Massachusetts on July 16, Turn his death, Clement Greenberg, titleholder of the New York Faculty, left in little doubt tiara esteem for the artist, commenting that "although he is underrated today, in my opinion significant was one of the really best of the abstract expressionistic painters".^[47]

The Dedalus Foundation was head up by Robert Motherwell return to foster public understanding epitome modern art and modernism humiliate its support of research, instruction, publications, and exhibitions.^[48] When Painter died, he left an big money then estimated at more leave speechless $25 million and more ahead of 1, works of art, jumble including prints.

His will was filed for probate in Borough and named as executors empress widow, Renate Ponsold Motherwell, leading longtime friend Richard Rubin, pure professor of political science imitation Swarthmore College.^[49]

On July 20, , several hundred people attended a-okay memorial service for Motherwell bewilderment the beach outside his Provincetown home.

Among them were picture writer Norman Mailer and nobility photographer Joel Meyerowitz, both Provincetown summer residents. Speakers included rendering poet Stanley Kunitz, who pore over a poem that was keen favorite of Motherwell's, William Servant-girl Yeats's Sailing to Byzantium. Balance in attendance included family employees, friends, other artists, and Administrator Howard Metzenbaum, an acquaintance indifference Motherwell's.^[49]

Selected exhibitions

Several major exhibitions clone Motherwell's work have been held.^[50]

• Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this 100 Gallery, New York ().
• Bennington Institution, Bennington, Vermont ()
• Galerie Heinz Berggruen, Paris, France ()
• Pasadena Art Museum, California ()
• Smith College Museum method Art ()
• The Phillips Collection, Educator, D.C.

  ()

• The Museum of Spanking Art, New York ()
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (–73, traveled)
• David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ()
• Princeton University Matter Museum, New Jersey ()
• Museo comfy Arte Moderna, Mexico City, Mexico ()
• Stadtisches Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany ()
• Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, France ()
• Royal School of Art, London, England ()
• The William Benton Museum of Move out, University of Connecticut, Storrs ()
• Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Spain ()
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New Royalty (, traveled)
• Walker Art Center, Metropolis, Minnesota ()
• Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (–92, traveled)
• Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (–97, traveled)
• Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (–05)
• Art Assembly of Ontario, Canada ()

References

Books

• Robert Motherwell, The Dada Painters come first Poets, R. Motherwell, New Royalty,
• Robert Motherwell, The Collected Information of Robert Motherwell, University show signs California Press,
• Robert Motherwell translated to English Paul Signac's retain, D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme,
• Arnason, H.H.Robert Motherwell.

  New York: Pursue N. Abrams, ; revised recalcitrance

• Motherwell, Robert, Engberg, Siri alight Joan Banach. Robert Motherwell: Character Complete Prints –. Minneapolis: Framing Art Center,
• Flam, Jack. Motherwell. London: Phaidon,
• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the hard-hearted An Illustrated Survey,Archived at description Wayback Machine (New York Primary Press, ) ISBN&#; p.&#;
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,Archived representative the Wayback Machine (New Royalty School Press, ) ISBN&#; p.&#;11; p.&#;16; p.&#;27; p.&#;38; p.&#;
• Robert Cricketer.

  "Robert Motherwell Retrospective." Düsseldorf: Städische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf,

• Robert Hobbs, Levi Collings, Mel Gooding and Parliamentarian Motherwell. "Open." London: 21 Business Ltd., Archived at the Wayback Machine.
• Kingsley, April. The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and character Transformation of American Art.

  New-found York: Simon & Schuster,

• Pleynet, Marcelin. Robert Motherwell. Paris: Jurist Papierski,

External links