"Abstract art is uniquely modern. It is a fundamentally romantic response to modern life-rebellious, individualistic, unconventional, sensitive, irritable."
Robert Motherwell (b. 1915, Aberdeen, WA; d. 1991, Provincetown, MA) produced art laden with philosophical, political, and literary themes. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Stanford University before beginning his PhD in philosophy at Harvard University. He left this program after a yearlong trip to Europe introduced him to European modernism, which inspired him to begin studying art history at Columbia University. There, he met art historian Meyer Schapiro, who encouraged Motherwell to pursue painting.
Motherwell was deeply influenced by meeting exiled Parisian Surrealists in New York, who introduced him to automatism, art as a manifestation of the subconscious mind, which became central to his work. In 1941, Motherwell took a trip to Mexico with artist Roberto Matta, where he decided to pursue painting as his vocation after producing a series of abstract sketches blending formalism and automatism. In 1943, Peggy Guggenheim invited Motherwell to exhibit his work in a show of collages. His collages showcase what would become his characteristic use of expressive brushwork, torn paper, and themes of political and psychic violence.
Throughout the 1940s, Motherwell taught art at the Black Mountain College and Hunter College, becoming a spokesperson for avant-garde art in America. He also began his series Elegies to the Spanish Republic, capturing the tragedy of war in a stark black and white palette. The gestural brush strokes as well as rectilinear and ovoid forms became core to his syle. Between 1953 and 1957, the artist produced his second major series: the works from his Je t’aime series exhibit brighter colors but continue to feature his lifelong interest in both European modernism's formalism and the American Abstract Expressionism.
In 1961, the artist turned his collages into limited edition lithographic prints, the only artist of the first generation of Abstract Expressionism to utilize printmaking. In 1968, after his divorce from artist Helen Frankenthaler, he began his series Opens. Like much of his oeuvre, these works build upon a relatively straightforward formal structure: a rectilinear box set against a monochromatic background. Within this framework, Motherwell was able to unlock an almost limitless potential for exploration and creative expansion. His works are characterized by their dualism: striking a balance between formalism and expressiveness. He created unique works of a singular artistic vision with an emphasis on felt experience, a preoccupation with liberating color and line, and an interest in the human psyche.