"It's not that the creative act and the critical act are simultaneous. It's more like you blurt something out and then analyze it." -- Robert Motherwell
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. The family later moved to San Francisco, where Motherwell's father served as president of Wells Fargo Bank. Robert Motherwell 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 awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1989.
He was married to artist Helen Frankenthaler as his third wife, whom he later divorced.
"Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.""Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.""If you can't find your inspiration by walking around the block one time, go around two blocks-but never three.""It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.""Most painting in the European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject matter was the person behind the mask.""Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.""Wherever art appears, life disappears."
Robert Motherwell, The Dada Painters and Poets, R. Motherwell, New York, 1951.
Robert Motherwell, The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, University 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.
Engberg, Siri and Joan Banach. Robert Motherwell: The Complete Prints 1940—1991. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2003.
Flam, Jack. Motherwell. London: Phaidon, 1991
Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 238-241
Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 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, Matthew Collings, Mel Gooding and Robert Motherwell. "Open." London: 21 Publishing Ltd., 2009.
Kingsley, April. 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.