Everything about Robert Motherwell totally explained
Robert Motherwell (
January 24,
1915 –
July 16,
1991) was an
American abstract expressionist painter and
printmaker. He was one of the youngest of the
New York School (a phrase he coined), which also included
Jackson Pollock,
Mark Rothko,
Willem de Kooning, and
Philip Guston
Motherwell was born in
Aberdeen, Washington. He received his
Bachelor of Arts degree in
philosophy from
Stanford University in 1937 and completed one year of a philosophy
Ph.D. at
Harvard before shifting fields to
art and
art history, studying under
Meyer Schapiro at
Columbia University. His rigorous background in
rhetoric would serve him and the abstract expressionists well, as he was able to tour the country giving speeches that articulated to the public what it was that he and his friends were doing in New York. Without his tireless devotion to communication (in addition to his prolific painting), well-known abstract expressionists like Rothko, who was extremely shy and rarely left his studio, might not have made it into the public eye. Motherwell's collected writings are a truly exceptional window into the abstract expressionist world. He was a lucid and engaging writer, and his essays are considered a bridge for those who want to learn more about non-representational art but who are put off by dense
art criticism.
Motherwell spent significant time in
Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Cy Twombly studied under him.
Motherwell's greatest goal was to use the staging of his work to convey to the viewer the mental and physical engagement of the artist with the canvas. He preferred using the starkness of
black paint as one of the basic elements of his paintings. He was known to frequently employ the technique of diluting his paint with
turpentine to create a
shadow effect. His long-running series of paintings "Elegies for the Spanish Republic" is generally considered his most significant project.
Motherwell was a member of the editorial board of the surrealist magazine
VVV and a contributor of
Wolfgang Paalens journal
Dyn, which was edited 1942-44 in six numbers. He also edited Paalens collected essays
Form and Sense in 1945 as the first Number of
Problems of Contemporary Art.
The
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth houses the largest collection of Motherwell's works. The
Walker Art Center also has a nearly-complete collection of his prints. The
Empire State Plaza holds some of his work.
He was married to artist
Helen Frankenthaler.
Books
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