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Robert MotherwellUntitled (Red) /// Abstract Expressionism Robert Motherwell Screenprint Minimal1971
1971
About the Item
Artist: Robert Motherwell (American, 1915-1991)
Title: "Untitled (Red)"
Portfolio: London Series I
*Signed by Motherwell in pencil lower right. It is also signed in the plate (printed signature) upper left
Year: 1971
Medium: Original Screenprint on J. B. Green Double Elephant paper
Limited edition: 32/150, (there were also 10 artist's proofs)
Printer: Chris Prater of Kelpra Studio, London, UK
Publisher: Marlborough Graphics, Inc., New York, NY
Reference: Belknap No. 62, page 176-177; Engberg No. 90
Framing: Within its original frame - the artwork is floated, framed in a gold contemporary moulding with black fabric matting and gold filet
Framed size: 51.38" x 38.38"
Sheet size: 41.25" x 28.25"
Image size: 36.25" 24.13"
Condition: In excellent condition
Rare
Notes:
Provenance: one owner ever - private collection - Detroit, MI; acquired from GMB Gallery Inc., Birmingham, MI in 1982 retaining its original receipt and appraisal. Numbered by Motherwell in pencil lower right. Comes from Motherwell's 1970-1971 "London Series" portfolio of five screenprints, (Belknap No. 60-64, page 176-177). The five works include "Untitled (Orange)", "Untitled (Blue)", "Untitled (Red)", "Untitled (Green)", and "Untitled (Black)". Printed in one color: red. The artist's Robert Motherwell chop mark/blind stamp lower right. A blind platemark the exact size of the image is added. J. B. Green watermark lower left. The printer Kelpra Studio's inkstamp and identification number "7626" stamped on verso lower right. Comes with a copy of the 304 page "The Prints of Robert Motherwell: A Catalogue Raisonne 1943-1984" by Stephanie Terenzio and Dorothy Belknap.
In 1970, Robert Motherwell began working with Chris Prater at the fine art printing studio Kelpra in London, producing screenprints that related both to his Basque Suite, and to his Open paintings. Beginning in 1967, and inspired by a chance juxtaposition of a large and small canvas, Motherwell's Open paintings occupied the artist for nearly two decades. Unlike his expressionist works, these compositions were quiet and meditative, the minimalist planes of color interrupted only by thin lines in rectangular configurations. The Kelpra screenprints continued this exploration of line and plane. As with the Open paintings, the composition is minimalist, with a plain field of color, and three slender vertical lines, suspended as it were from the top of the paper, meeting a single horizontal line. The thin lines are barely discernible against the pure intense color of the ink on paper.
Biography:
Robert Motherwell was born January 24, 1915, in Aberdeen, Washington. He was awarded a fellowship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles at age 11, and in 1932 studied painting briefly at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Motherwell received a B.A. from Stanford University in 1937 and enrolled for graduate work later that year in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He traveled to Europe in 1938 for a year of study abroad. His first solo show was presented at the Raymond Duncan Gallery in Paris in 1939.
In September of 1940, Motherwell settled in New York, where he entered Columbia University to study art history with Meyer Schapiro, who encouraged him to become a painter. In 1941, Motherwell traveled to Mexico with Roberto Matta for six months. After returning to New York, his circle came to include William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Jackson Pollock. In 1942, Motherwell was included in the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion, New York. In 1944, Motherwell became editor of the Documents of Modern Art series of books, and he contributed frequently to the literature on Modern art from that time.
A solo exhibition of Motherwell’s work was held at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, New York, in 1944. In 1946, he began to associate with Herbert Ferber, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, and spent his first summer in East Hampton, Long Island. This year, Motherwell was given solo exhibitions at the Arts Club of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Art, and he participated in Fourteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The artist subsequently taught and lectured throughout the United States, and continued to exhibit extensively in the United States and abroad. A Motherwell exhibition took place at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1976–77. He was given important solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 1978. A retrospective of his works organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, traveled in the United States from 1983 to 1985. From 1971, the artist lived and worked in Greenwich, Connecticut. He died July 16, 1991, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
- Creator:Robert Motherwell (1915-1991, American)
- Creation Year:1971
- Dimensions:Height: 51.38 in (130.51 cm)Width: 38.38 in (97.49 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Saint Augustine, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU121211953462
Robert Motherwell
The name of painter, printmaker and writer Robert Motherwell (1915–91) is often taken as synonymous with the New York School, whose name he coined. Motherwell was the youngest of this group of Abstract Expressionists working in art, dance, poetry and music in 1950s and '60s New York City, which included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko.
Born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1915, Motherwell had perhaps the broadest and best education of any of the New York School coterie, with an extensive background in philosophy, literature and art history. He earned a BA in philosophy in 1937 from Stanford University and was working toward a PhD in the subject at Harvard when he interrupted his studies for a yearlong trip to Europe, where he fell in love with European modernism.
After returning, in 1940 he enrolled Columbia to study art history. It was there that he met a group of exiled Parisian Surrealists, and encounter that proved influential on his style. Motherwell began to integrate the idea of “automatism” — unmediated gestures that reflect deeper psychological impulses — into his work, pioneering a new form of Abstract Expressionism that came to characterize the New York School.
Works like the 1967 Beside the Sea no. 45, an acrylic on canvas, and the 1966 lithograph New York International epitomize Motherwell’s use of simple shapes in boldly contrasting colors, executed in quick, gestural strokes that occasionally evoke figures, suggesting a latent narrative despite their obvious abstraction.
Throughout his career, Motherwell taught painting at Hunter College, in New York, and at Black Mountain College, in North Carolina, where his work influenced the likes of Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg and Kenneth Noland. His influence as one of the founding fathers of American Abstract Expressionism remains profound.
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