Robert Motherwell Art For Sale
Robert Motherwell was an American artist and seminal Abstract Expressionist painter. Influenced by automatic writing and drawing prescribed by the Surrealists, Robert Motherwell’s practice was characterized by an intuitive approach to painting. Robert Motherwell is perhaps best known for his iconic Elegy to the Spanish Republic series, which consists of 150 variants of black forms on white backgrounds. “Painting is a medium in which the mind can actualize itself; it is a medium of thought,” he once reflected. “Thus painting, like music, tends to become its own content.”
Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tate Modern in London, among others.
Our Fine Art Gallery has the finest quality Robert Motherwell original prints and lithographs. We have a large inventory available off-site and we encourage you to make an appointment to see specific works you are looking to collect. We are happy to meet you at either our art gallery showroom or at your home or office for a private presentation.
About Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell was born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1915, but he would spend much of his childhood in the dry environs of central California, where he was sent in an effort to relieve his severe asthma. The son of a well-to-do and conservative bank chairman, Motherwell was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. From early on, though, Motherwell displayed an affinity for more intellectual and creative pursuits, and his early education included a scholarship to study at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.
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Before he devoted himself entirely to art practice, Motherwell received an extensive education in philosophy, literature and art history. He began his studies at Stanford University, where he earned a BA in philosophy in 1937. There he encountered the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and the work of French symbolist poets, and these twin inspirations helped to open Motherwell’s mind to the possibilities of abstraction in writing and art.
Motherwell’s first known works were composed during a 1941 trip to Mexico with the Surrealist painter Roberto Matta. These eleven pen and ink drawings, collectively called the “Mexican Sketchbook,” show the influence of Surrealism, yet they are essentially abstract in nature and balance formal composition with the spontaneous invention. Motherwell’s career then received a jump-start in 1943 when Peggy Guggenheim offered him the opportunity to create new work for a show of collages by several European modernists. He took to college immediately and would continue to utilize the technique throughout his career. The pieces included in the show featured a mixture of torn paper, expressively applied paint, and violent themes relating to the Second World War. The show proved successful for Motherwell, and it was followed by a solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in New York in 1944, and a contract with the dealer Sam Kootz in 1945.
As arguably the most eloquent and intellectually accomplished of all the New York School painters, Robert Motherwell’s legacy is significant not only for the importance of his paintings but also for the breadth and influence of his writing, editing, and teaching. Yet, it is first and foremost in the artist’s work – which both bridged and challenged the dual influences of European and American Modernism, and which, despite its interest in formal dialogues, never neglected the necessity of human empathy – that Motherwell’s legacy will continue to endure.