Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell, whose interests included art, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, was primarily a self-taught artist. While doing graduate work in the 1930s he traveled to France and became interested in the work of the exiled Surrealists and in French Symbolist poetry. In 1939, in New York City, he exhibited his paintings at Surrealist exhibitions, but was soon drawn to the Abstract Expressionist movement.
His early works were paintings, then he experimented with collage, and later combined the two. His paintings often combined stick figures with arbitrary symbols in an attempt to convey the workings of the unconscious instinctive mind.

Motherwell exhibited his collages at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery in 1944. His first solo show was in 1939 at the Raymond Duncan Gallery in Paris. He went on to have numerous solo exhibitions through 1990 around the world. Motherwell's work was included in a multitude of group exhibitions internationally during his career. His most recent exhibitions were at the Denver Art Museum (2002) and the Krannert Art Museum (2002). He co-founded, with William Baziotes, Barnett Neuman and Mark Rothko, a school in New York City, ""Subject of the Artist,"" in 1948. Motherwell lectured extensively in universities and museums throughout the United States.
Motherwell received several awards and grants including the Grand Medaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris in 1978 and the Gold Medal of Honor from the National Arts Club in 1983.
His work is in the permanent collections of over seventy museums worldwide including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Orlando Museum of Art (FL), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), the High Museum (GA), the Tate Gallery (Britain), and the Wallrof Richartz Museum (Germany).

(Source: under review)