The 46 Artworks of Robert Motherwell

Of all the Abstract Expressionists, Motherwell was the closest to the émigré Surrealists, many of whom had sought refuge in New York at the outset of World War II. The Surrealists' practice of automatism, where spontaneous marks are used to create shapes and organize composition, had inspired Mother...

Like

 

Beginning about 1948, Motherwell began making oil sketches and paintings that evolved into a series of more than one hundred variations on a theme he called Elegies to the Spanish Republic. Initially inspired by the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and contemporary poetry, his Elegies constitute an exten...

Like