Robert Motherwell: A Centennial Celebration
November 21, 2015–March 27, 2016
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) helped forge a new vision of painting that established Abstract Expressionism at the vanguard of post-war painting and transformed New York into the epicenter of the art world in the second half of the twentieth-century. Drawn from the holdings of the Archives of American Art, this exhibition marks the centennial of his birth.
A painter, collagist, teacher, and writer, Motherwell was also regarded as the primary spokesman of the New York School—a term he coined in 1949. Born on January 24, 1915 in Aberdeen, Washington, Motherwell’s childhood was spent in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. After graduating from Stanford University he studied philosophy at Harvard and art history at Columbia, before dropping out to devote himself to painting in 1941. Through his friendships with the European artists in exile in New York during World War II, Motherwell was exposed to diverse strains of European modernism, from Surrealist automatism to the abstraction of Mondrian, along with works by Picasso, Matisse and Miró. He drew on these influences to shape a personal language that emphasized the direct expression in his chosen mediums of a complex and personal subject matter.
This selection of photographs, letters, posters, catalogs and essays including early drafts, illuminates his many roles, as well as the personal relationships that shaped Motherwell’s career and his impact on the history of modern art in the twentieth-century.
Tim Clifford
Guest Curator
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Robert Motherwell draft for The school of New York
- Date
- 1951 January 1
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Robert Motherwell letter to Frank Perls
- Date
- 1951 January 27
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Robert Motherwell letter to Emerson Woelffer
- Date
- 1956 March 17
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Robert Motherwell teaching at Black Mountain Rock
- Date
- ca. 1945
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Joseph Cornell silver foil carpet rubbings
- Date
- 1946 October
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Subjects of the Artist school catalog
- Date
- 1948
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Robert Motherwell letter to Joseph Cornell
- Date
- 1950 Feb. 18
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collection set
- Joseph Cornell papers, 1804-1986, bulk 1939-1972 19
- Kootz Gallery records, 1923-1966 9
- Long Point Gallery records, 1959-1999, bulk 1976-1998 6
- Frank Perls papers and Frank Perls Gallery records, circa 1920-1983, bulk 1949-1975 3
- Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, circa 1914-1984, bulk 1942-1984 3
- William C. Seitz papers, circa 1930-1995 2
- William and Ethel Baziotes papers, circa 1900-1992, bulk 1935-1980 2
- Arthur Coleman Danto papers, 1979-1998 1
- Bernard J. Reis papers, circa 1913-1983 1
- Emerson Woelffer papers, 1937-1999 1
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