Robert Motherwell – philosopher and titan of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School
„The death of Robert Motherwell [...] marks the final guttering out of the lamp of American painting’s most heroic generation. Now only Willem de Kooning remains among the titans of Abstract Expressionism […]“ read a headline in the Los Angeles Times in 1991, following the death of Robert Motherwell. Motherwell undoubtedly ranks alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Helen Frankenthaler as one of the great heroes of American painting. Today, celebrated as the New York School, these artists had a decisive influence on Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting. This radical departure, which took place in the American art metropolis of New York in the middle of the century, was to make America the center of an internationally celebrated art movement for the first time, with Robert Motherwell among its protagonists.

Coming from a Scottish-Irish immigrant family, Motherwell had a keen interest in music and literature. From an early age, he loved Bach, Haydn, and Mozart and was fascinated by Baudelaire and Proust. He attended Stanford University and then transferred to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy. Motherwell came to New York in 1940 and emerged as a cosmopolitan intellectual of Abstract Expressionism, well-traveled, extremely literate, and genuinely interested in philosophical and art-theoretical questions. In 1951, in the context of a symposium on the occasion of his participation in the exhibition “Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America” at the Museum of Modern Art, he published his legendary essay “What abstract art means to me,” in which he describes the artistic creative process as a mystical act. This mysterious spiritual experience drives the artist out of a deficit feeling of disconnection:

"But whatever the source of this sense of being unwedded to the universe, I think that one’s art is just one’s effort to wed oneself to the universe, to unify oneself through union. [...] If this suggestion is true, then modern art has a different face from the art of the past because it has a somewhat different function for the artist in our time. […] One of the most striking aspects of abstract art’s appearance is her nakedness, an art stripped bare. […] One might almost legitimately receive the impression that abstract artists don’t like anything but the act of painting . . .
[…] abstract art is a form of mysticism. […] I love painting the way one loves the body of woman, that if painting must have an intellectual and social background, it is only to enhance and make more rich an essentially warm, simple, radiant act, for which everyone has a need . . .“.
Robert Motherwell, What abstract art means to me, 1951.


"Elegy to the Spanish Republic“ - Timeless metaphor for life and death, becoming and perishing
The central significance of the artist's personal disposition to his style, and the unique impact of his paintings, which are characterized by an almost poetic and intellectual aura, are particularly evident in Motherwell's work. In 1948, when he was in his early thirties, he began his famous series, “Elegy to the Spanish Republic,” comprising over 200 paintings. The atrocities of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, which also inspired Picasso to paint “Guernica” (1937), also left such a profound impression on the then 21-year-old Motherwell that he began to process these formative existential experiences between death and life in his art more than ten years later, even after the horrors of World War II. Motherwell's allusion to human mortality, captured on canvas in large, painterly gestures, reveals his admiration for French Symbolism, an appreciation he shared with fellow Abstract Expressionists. The abstract motif recurring in almost all of the “Elegies” — an alternating pattern of bulbous shapes squeezed between column-like forms —can be understood as an expression of loss and resistance, while the juxtaposition of black shapes and a white background also appears to symbolize the dichotomy of life and death. Motherwell himself said about this series created between 1948 and 1971: “After a period of painting them, I discovered Black as one of my subjects—and with black, the contrasting white, a sense of life and death which to me is quite Spanish.” (quoted from: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3047). Motherwell's allusion to human mortality, expressed through abstract abbreviations and recurring motifs in a non-referential visual language, shows his admiration for French Symbolism. Motherwell was particularly inspired by the conviction of the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé that a poem should not represent a specific entity, idea, or event, but rather the emotional effect it evokes. And so Motherwell's “Elegies to the Spanish Republic” are aesthetically sophisticated and timeless metaphors for the contrast between life and death and the existential and eternal interdependence of becoming and perishing.


Motherwell’s “Open # 184" – Intellectually condensed icon of post-war America
Parallel to the “Elegys,” Motherwell, who had been married to Helen Frankenthaler since the end of 1958, began another important series of works in 1967, the “Open” series (1967–1969), which includes the present large-format composition “Open #184.” These groundbreaking works mark an apogee in Motherwell's oeuvre, for in the decidedly bold aesthetics of the monumental canvases, he succeeded in employing elements of Minimal Art in his epochal, deeply emotional, and intellectually rich painting. Poised and daring, he set the clearly defined lines in black charcoal on the canvas and, in a first step, immersed the canvas in a soft, flatly applied tone that, like the gesturally executed color accents, shifts the focus to the brushwork. Motherwell merges graphic and painterly elements on the enormous canvas surface to create an entirely new aesthetic, which, due to the economy of its painterly means, is surrounded by a captivating, almost spiritual aura. The decisive inspiration for the “Open” series of works came from an incidental event in Motherwell's studio, when a smaller canvas leaned against a larger one, and the artist suddenly realized that the small canvas seemed to casually create the outline of a door or window on the surface of the larger canvas. The motif of a door or window opening, suggested only in outline, was to become the central motif of this series. A metaphor for the transition between inside and outside, between body and psyche, between the physical and metaphysical worlds. Once again, Motherwell's outstanding intellectual and painterly mastery is demonstrated in the formal compression, condensation, and repetition of a painterly motif.
This chance moment, this fleeting observation, was to be the pivotal moment for the “Open” series, which today ranks among the icons of American post-war painting. These radically modern creations appear like fleeting, giant-sized silhouettes. They can now be found—like the paintings in the “Elegy to the Spanish Republic” series—in the most prestigious museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art (Open #101, 1968/69) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (Open #24, 1968), as well as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Open #124, 1969). [JS]