Robert Motherwell - Contemporary Art Day Sale London Wednesday, October 10, 2012 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    The Dedalus Foundation, New York
    Knoedler & Co., New York
    Galerie Klüser, Munich
    Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin
    Private Collection, Ireland

  • Exhibited

    Leverkusen, Museum Morsbroich, Motherwell, 17October 2004–30January 2005, p.76 (illustrated)
    Munich, Galerie Bernd Kluser, Robert Motherwell: Paintings, Collages, Works on Paper, 4May–30July 2005
    Dublin, Hillsboro Fine Art, Summer Exhibition, 7June–6July 2007

  • Literature

    R. Stiftel, ‘Stürmisches Schwarz’, Westfälischer Anzeiger, 21December 2004, p.298

  • Catalogue Essay

    This work will be included in the forthcoming Robert Motherwell: Paintings and Collages, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941–1991, to be published by Yale University Press, October 2012.

  • Artist Biography

    Robert Motherwell

    American • 1915 - 1991

    One of the youngest proponents of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Robert Motherwell rose to critical acclaim with his first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery in 1944. Not only was Motherwell one of the major practicing Abstract Expressionist artists, he was, in fact, the main intellectual driving force within the movement—corralling fellow New York painters such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman and William Baziotes into his circle. Motherwell later coined the term the "New York School", a designation synonymous to Abstract Expressionism that loosely refers to a wide variety of non-objective work produced in New York between 1940 and 1960.

    During an over five-decade-long career, Motherwell created a large and powerful body of varied work that includes paintings, drawings, prints and collages. Motherwell's work is most generally characterized by simple shapes, broad color contrasts and a dynamic interplay between restrained and gestural brushstrokes. Above all, it demonstrates his approach to art-making as a response to the complexity of lived, and importantly felt, experience.

    View More Works

193

Grey and Black Open

1979
acrylic on canvas on board
38 × 76 cm (14 7/8 × 29 7/8 in)
Incised ‘Motherwell’ lower right.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for £74,450

Contemporary Art Day Sale

11 October 2012
London