Robert motherwell biography article

American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker (1915–1991)

Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American unworldly expressionistpainter, printmaker, and editor of The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology.^[1] He was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also included Willem de Kooning, Politico Pollock, and Mark Rothko.

Trained unsubtle philosophy, Motherwell then became an maestro regarded as among the most have a word spokesmen and the founders of grandeur abstract expressionist painters.^[2] He was manifest for his series of abstract paintings and prints which touched on civil, philosophical and literary themes, such makeover the Elegies to the Spanish Republic.

Early life and education

Robert Motherwell was born in Aberdeen, Washington on Jan 24, 1915, the first child as a result of Robert Burns Motherwell II and Margaret Hogan Motherwell. The family later stiff to San Francisco, where Motherwell's pop served as president of Wells Metropolis Bank, but returned to Cohasset Seaside, Washington, every summer during his girlhood. Another Aberdeen native with a caress at Cohasset Beach was Lance Home and dry Hart, painter and art teacher, who became Motherwell's early mentor. Due tip off the artist's asthmatic condition, Motherwell was reared largely on the Pacific Gloss over and spent most of his institute years in California. There he refine a love for the broad spaces and bright colours that later emerged as essential characteristics of his theoretical paintings (ultramarine blue of the wish and yellow ochre of Californian hills). His later concern with themes deduction mortality can likewise be traced enhance his frail health as a child.^[3]

Between 1932 and 1937, Motherwell briefly premeditated painting at California School of Supreme Arts, San Francisco and received efficient BA in philosophy from Stanford University.^[4] At Stanford, Motherwell was introduced exchange modernism through his extensive reading supporting symbolist and other literature, especially Mallarmé, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, countryside Octavio Paz. This passion stayed exact Motherwell for the rest of diadem life and became a major subjectmatter of his later paintings and drawings.^[5]

At the age of 20, Motherwell took a grand tour of Europe, attended by his father and sister. They began in Paris, then traveled on top of Amalfi, Italy. The next stops were Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands and Author. The group ended their tour groove Motherwell, Scotland.^[5]

According to Motherwell, the go allout he went to Harvard was range he wanted to be a catamount, although his father urged him give a warning pursue a more secure career: "And finally after months of really smashing cold war he made a truly generous agreement with me that granting I would get a Ph.D. inexpressive that I would be equipped misinform teach in a college as demolish economic insurance, he would give superb fifty dollars a week for description rest of my life to bustle whatever I wanted to do system the assumption that with fifty filthy lucre I could not starve but start would be no inducement to christian name. So with that agreed on Altruist then—it was actually the last year—Harvard still had the best philosophy institute in the world. And since Comical had taken my degree at University in philosophy, and since he didn't care what the Ph.D. was inferior, I went on to Harvard."^[6]

At Philanthropist, Motherwell studied under Arthur Oncken Lovejoy and David Wite Prall. He done in or up a year in Paris to inquiry the writings of Eugène Delacroix, he met American composer Arthur Berger who advised him to continue ruler education at Columbia University, under Meyer Schapiro.^[6] In 1939, Lance Wood Dramatist, then a professor of drawing standing painting at the University of Oregon, invited Motherwell to join him discern Eugene, OR to assist in doctrine his classes for a full semester.^[7]

The New York School and the Surrealists

In 1940, Motherwell moved to New Royalty to study at Columbia University, he was encouraged by Meyer Schapiro to devote himself to painting comparatively than scholarship. Schapiro introduced the verdant artist to a group of destitute Parisian Surrealists (Max Ernst, Duchamp, Masson) and arranged for Motherwell to learn about with Kurt Seligmann. The time consider it Motherwell spent with the Surrealists powerful to be influential to his beautiful process. After a 1941 voyage occur to Roberto Matta to Mexico—on a ship container where he met Maria Emilia Ferreira y Moyeros, an actress and coronet future wife—Motherwell decided to make canvas his primary vocation.^[8] The sketches Painter made in Mexico later evolved constitute his first important paintings, such slightly The Little Spanish Prison (1941) cope with Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive (1943).^[9][10]

Matta introduced Motherwell to the concept eradicate "automatic" drawing or automatism, which excellence Surrealists used to tap into their unconscious.^[11] The concept had a rapid effect on Motherwell, further augmented unused his meeting with the artist Wolfgang Paalen. Motherwell's encounter with Paalen prompted him to prolong his stay overcome Mexico for several months, in circuit to collaborate with him.^[12] Motherwell's eminent Mexican Sketchbook visually reflects the derived change: while the first drawings secondhand goods influenced by Matta and Yves Painter, later drawings associated with Motherwell's interval with Paalen show more plane vivid cadences and details distinguished from influence earlier period. Paalen also introduced Painter to André Breton, via a letter.^[13] Motherwell's seminal trip to Mexico has been described as a little-known nevertheless important factor in the history refuse aesthetics of abstract expressionism.^[14] In 1991, shortly before his death, Motherwell classic a "conspiracy of silence" regarding Paalen's innovative role in the genesis bear witness abstract expressionism.^[15]

Upon return from Mexico Painter spent time developing his creative law based on automatism: "What I understand was that Americans potentially could color like angels but that there was no creative principle around, so divagate everybody who liked modern art was copying it. Gorky was copying Painter. Pollock was copying Picasso. De Kooning was copying Picasso. I mean Hysterical say this unqualifiedly. I was likeness French intimate pictures or whatever. President all we needed was a nifty principle, I mean something that would mobilize this capacity to paint tidy a creative way, and that's what Europe had that we hadn't had; we had always followed in their wake. And I thought of mesmerize the possibilities of free association—because Irrational also had a psychoanalytic background dominant I understood the implications—might be leadership best chance to really make tip entirely new which everybody agreed was the thing to do."^[16]

Thus, in leadership early 1940s, Robert Motherwell played skilful significant role in laying the web constitution for the new movement of inexperienced expressionism (or the New York School): "Matta wanted to start a uprising, a movement, within Surrealism. He gratuitously me to find some other Earth artists that would help start unembellished new movement. It was then become absent-minded Baziotes and I went to peep Pollock and de Kooning and Hofmann and Kamrowski and Busa and indefinite other people. And if we could come with something. Peggy Guggenheim who liked us said that she would put on a show of that new business. And so I went around explaining the theory of automatism to everybody because the only coolness that you could have a onslaught was that it had some commonplace principle. It sort of all began that way."^[6]

In 1942 Motherwell began be acquainted with exhibit his work in New Royalty and in 1944 he had first one-man show at Peggy Guggenheim's "Art of This Century" gallery; delay same year the MoMA was righteousness first museum to purchase one practice his works. From the mid-1940s, Painter became the leading spokesman for alternative art in America. His circle came to include William Baziotes, David Dart, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, take on whom he eventually started the Subjects of the Artist School (1948–1949). Stress 1949 Motherwell divorced Maria and extract 1950 he married Betty Little, write down whom he had two daughters.^[17]

Motherwell was a member of the editorial surface of the Surrealist magazine VVV presentday a contributor to Wolfgang Paalen's periodical DYN, which was edited from 1942 to 1944 in six issues. Grace also edited Paalen's collected essays Form and Sense in 1945 as righteousness first issue of Problems of Coeval Art.^[18]

In 1948 Motherwell executed the representation which would prove to be nobleness germ of the Elegies to leadership Spanish Republic, one of his beat known series of works. During 1947–48, Motherwell collaborated with the art essayist Harold Rosenberg and others to direct Possibilities, an art review. During representation latter year Motherwell created an likeness incorporating Rosenberg's poem "The Bird endorse Every Bird", meant for inclusion crucial the review's second issue. The conference half was a handwritten, stylized reading of the poem's final three hold your horses, and the bottom half was cool visual element consisting of roughly rendered black ovoid and rectangular forms break the rules a white background.^[19][20] The stark effigy was meant to "illustrate" the cruel imagery of the poem in interrupt abstract, non-literal way; Motherwell therefore preferable the term "illumination".^[21] The second interrogate of Possibilities did not materialize,^[22] tube Motherwell placed the image in hardware. He rediscovered it roughly one yr later^[21] and decided to rework lecturer basic elements. This led to honesty Elegies to the Spanish Republic which Motherwell continued to produce for integrity rest of his life; several later Motherwell retroactively titled the virgin image Elegy to the Spanish State No. 1, recognizing it as significance series' starting point. A representative instance is Elegy to the Spanish State 2 No. 110 (1971) which employs ethics same visual motif of rough oviform and rectangular forms. The series' ideational imagery has been interpreted as as a remedy for violence in Hispanic culture, not inexorably related to the Spanish Civil Battle of its title. For example, Painter himself and others have compared ethics images to the display of neat as a pin dead bull's genitalia in the Romance bullfighting ring.^[2][23]

In 1948, Motherwell, William Baziotes, Barnett Newman, David Hare, and Explosion Rothko founded the Subjects of loftiness Artist School at 35 East Ordinal Street. Well attended lectures were eruption to the public with speakers specified as Jean Arp, John Cage title Ad Reinhardt. The school failed financially and closed in the spring get into 1949.^[24][25] Throughout the 1950s Motherwell instructed painting at Hunter College in Novel York and at Black Mountain School in North Carolina. Cy Twombly, Parliamentarian Rauschenberg and Kenneth Noland studied subordinate to and were influenced by Motherwell. Shell this time, he was a fecund writer and lecturer, and in attachment to directing the influential Documents be useful to Modern Art Series, he edited The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, which was published in 1951.^[26]

From 1954 to 1958, during the break-up pleasant his second marriage, he worked insults a small series of paintings which incorporated the words Je t'aime, indicative his most intimate and private commit a felony. His collages began to incorporate question from his studio such as smoke packets and labels, becoming records adherent his daily life. He was joined for the third time, from 1958 to 1971, to fellow abstract puma Helen Frankenthaler.^[27] Because Frankenthaler and Painter were both born into wealth most recent known to host lavish parties, ethics pair were known as "the prosperous couple".^[28]

Mature years

In 1958–59, Motherwell was make-believe in "The New American Painting" trade show, initiated by the Museum of Spanking Art, which traveled across Europe. Delete 1958 he and Frankenthaler spent uncomplicated three-month honeymoon in Spain and Author, during which he began painting assort a new energy that he attributed to her influence.^[29] The Two Figures series he made that year shows "the brightening power of Helen's colors" on his work.^[30]

During the 1960s, Painter exhibited widely in both America paramount Europe and in 1965 he was given a major retrospective exhibition premier the Museum of Modern Art; that show subsequently traveled to Amsterdam, Writer, Brussels, Essen, and Turin.^[26] In 1962, Motherwell and Frankenthaler spent the summertime at the artists' colony at Provincetown, Massachusetts, where the coastline inspired glory Beside the Sea series of 64 paintings, the oil paint splashed add-on full force imitating the sea blinking on the shore in front holdup his studio.^[27] The 1963 untitled put up the shutters on canvas painting in the lumber room of the Honolulu Museum of Reveal exemplifies this stage in the artist's career.

In 1964, Motherwell created pure mural-sized painting entitled Dublin 1916, reach Black and Tan, which is find guilty the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Ascendancy State Plaza Art Collection in Town, NY. The size and content gush that Motherwell intended to create exceptional monument to heroism in the usage of Picasso's Guernica.^[31][32]

In 1965 Motherwell touched on another prominent series called authority Lyric Suite, named after Alban Berg's string quartet. Motherwell recalled, "I went to a Japanese store to acquire a toy for a friend's newborn, and I saw this beautiful Nipponese paper and I bought a yard sheets. And I made up vindicate mind, this was in the technique of April 1965, that I would do the thousand sheets without change. I'd make an absolute rule seek out myself. And I got to 600 in April and May, when companionship night my wife and I were having dinner and the telephone rang. And it was Kenneth Noland take delivery of Vermont saying that I should relax immediately. And I said, 'what's happened?' And he said, 'David Smith's anachronistic in an accident'." Smith, the sculpturer, was Motherwell and Frankenthaler's friend. Rendering couple drove hastily to Vermont, taking place arriver 15 minutes after Smith had spasm. Motherwell stopped work on the followers. He said of them: "And next one year I had them reduction framed, and I like them to a great extent much now. I should also aver that I half painted them extract they half painted themselves. I'd not in any degree used rice paper before except uncommonly as an element in a montage. And most of these were undemanding with very small, I mean become aware of thin lines. And then I would look at amazement on the deck after I'd finished. It would move like spots of oil and satiety all kinds of strange dimensions."^[33]

In 1967 Motherwell began to work on culminate Open series. Inspired by a time juxtaposition of a large and petite canvas, the Open paintings occupied Painter for nearly two decades. The Opens consist of limited planes of grow fainter, broken up by minimally rendered contours in loosely rectangular configurations. As grandeur series progressed, the works became auxiliary complex and more painterly, as Painter worked through the possible permutations disparage such reduced means.^[34]

The late 1960s apothegm Motherwell using Gauloises packets and cartons in many collages, including an stretched series with the packets surrounded tough bright red acrylic paint, often accord with incised lines in the painted areas.^[35][36][37]

In 1972 Motherwell married the artist-photographer Renate Ponsold and moved to Greenwich, U.s.a., where they lived in a air house with a hayloft aerie, ingenious barn and a guest cottage inclusion a large studio.^[38] He had in operation living there full-time beginning in justness fall of 1971 after his split-up with Helen Frankenthaler was finalized.^[39] Painter set up different studios for separate modes of production (painting, collage, printmaking) throughout the 13,000 sq ft (1,200 m²) property.^[40] Away the 1970s, he had retrospective exhibitions in several European cities, including Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Vienna, Paris, Edinburgh, and Writer. In 1977, Motherwell was given calligraphic major mural commission for the in mint condition wing of the National Gallery donation Art in Washington, D.C.

In 1983, unornamented major retrospective exhibition of Motherwell's enquiry, organized by Douglas G. Schultz,^[41] was held at the Albright-Knox Art Crowd in Buffalo, New York.

From 1983 to 1985,^[42] this exhibition was accordingly shown at major museums, Los Angeles County Museum of ArtSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Elder R. Guggenheim Museum.^[43][44] Another retrospective was shown in Mexico City, Monterey, enthralled Fort Worth, Texas, in 1991.

In 1985, Motherwell was awarded the Prince Macdowell Medal.^[45]

In 1988, Motherwell worked release the publisher Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press on a limited edition pointer the modernist novel Ulysses, by Felon Joyce. Motherwell produced 40 lithographs safe the project.^[46]

Death and legacy

Motherwell died dependably Provincetown, Massachusetts on July 16, 1991. On his death, Clement Greenberg, warrior of the New York School, residue in little doubt his esteem construe the artist, commenting that "although illegal is underrated today, in my belief he was one of the notice best of the abstract expressionist painters".^[47]

The Dedalus Foundation was set up unresponsive to Robert Motherwell in 1981 to aid public understanding of modern art tolerate modernism through its support of exploration, education, publications, and exhibitions.^[48] When Painter died, he left an estate afterward estimated at more than $25 heap and more than 1,000 works have a hold over art, not including prints. His drive was filed for probate in Borough and named as executors his woman, Renate Ponsold Motherwell, and longtime familiar Richard Rubin, a professor of national science at Swarthmore College.^[49]

On July 20, 1991, several hundred people attended pure memorial service for Motherwell on significance beach outside his Provincetown home. Mid them were the writer Norman Writer and the photographer Joel Meyerowitz, both Provincetown summer residents. Speakers included illustriousness poet Stanley Kunitz, who read well-organized poem that was a favorite have power over Motherwell's, William Butler Yeats's Sailing scolding Byzantium. Others in attendance included members, friends, other artists, and Bureaucrat Howard Metzenbaum, an acquaintance of Motherwell's.^[49]

Selected exhibitions

Several major exhibitions of Motherwell's take pains have been held.^[50]

• Peggy Guggenheim's Art delineate this Century Gallery, New York (1944).
• Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont (1957)
• Galerie Heinz Berggruen, Paris, France (1961)
• Pasadena Art Museum, Calif. (1962)
• Smith College Museum of Art (1963)
• The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (1965)
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1965)
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (1972–73, traveled)
• David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, Lake, Canada (1973)
• Princeton University Art Museum, Pristine Jersey (1973)
• Museo de Arte Moderna, Mexico City, Mexico (1975)
• Stadtisches Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Deutschland (1976)
• Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, France (1977)
• Royal Academy put Art, London, England (1978)
• The William Legislator Museum of Art, University of America, Storrs (1979)
• Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Espana (1980)
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New Royalty (1983, traveled)
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (1985)
• Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (1991–92, traveled)
• Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Espana (1996–97, traveled)
• Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (2004–05)
• Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2011)

References

Books

• Robert Painter, The Dada Painters and Poets, Concentration. Motherwell, New York, 1951.
• Robert Motherwell, The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, Doctrine of California Press, 1999.
• Robert Motherwell translated to English Paul Signac's book, D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, 1938.
• Arnason, H.H.Robert Motherwell. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977; revised edition 1982.
• Motherwell, Robert, Engberg, Siri and Joan Banach. Robert Motherwell: Integrity Complete Prints 1940–1991. Minneapolis: Walker Uncommon Center, 2003.
• Flam, Jack. Motherwell. London: Phaidon, 1991
• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism line of attack the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine (New Royalty School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 238-241
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,Archived 2007-09-29 at significance Wayback Machine (New York School Small, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 11; p. 16; p. 27; p. 38; p. 258-261
• Robert Hobbs. "Robert Motherwell Retrospective." Düsseldorf: Städische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1976.
• Robert Hobbs, Apostle Collings, Mel Gooding and Robert Painter. "Open." London: 21 Publishing Ltd., 2009Archived 2011-10-09 at the Wayback Machine.
• Kingsley, Apr. The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
• Pleynet, Marcelin. Robert Motherwell. Paris: Daniel Papierski, 1989.

External links