Robert Motherwell - Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York Wednesday, May 15, 2024 | Phillips

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  • Created just two years before the artist’s death, Robert Motherwell’s large scale Hollow Men Series, 1989, is a testament to his painterly practice and deep connections to the tumultuous world around him. Inspired by a 1977 drawing and created in the last 8 years of his life, the approximately 33 works bearing the Hollow Men title represent an amalgamation of techniques, forms and colors that were developed throughout the artist’s life. Building upon his already iconic pictorial vocabulary, the present work takes the themes of life and death which pervaded Motherwell one step further.

    “After a period of painting [the Elegies], 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. They are essentially the Spanish black of death contrasted with the dazzle of Matisse-like sunlight.”
    —Robert Motherwell

    Originally created as a response to the Spanish Civil War, Motherwell’s renowned Elegies serve as a precursor to the present work, icons of a deeply political investigation into the interrelation between life and death. The Elegies serve as memorials to the human loss and suffering that was felt throughout Europe in the 1940s and beyond. Rendered in starkly contrasting blacks and whites, the abstracted forms in these works allow Motherwell the freedom to relate them to any given moment each time they are repeated.

     

    Robert Motherwell, Reconciliation Elegy, 1978, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of the Collectors Committee, 1978.20.1, Artwork: © 2024 Dedalus Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

    The title of the present work is a reference to the groundbreaking 1925 poem by T. S. Eliot, one which grapples with the ideas of hopelessness, religious conversion and redemption; themes that were ever present in post-World War I Europe. Following the journey of “violent souls,” the poem refers to men who are indeed hollow – broken and without a soul or sense of purpose. Relating the meaning of the poem almost immediately to his interpretations of the aftermath of war throughout the world in the twentieth century, Motherwell imbues a deeper literary meaning to the notions of grief and mourning in Hollow Men Series. Interpretting Eliot’s work as a true testament to the culture and feelings of post-war Europe, Motherwell returned to the poet’s words towards the end of his life, repeating Hollow Men in the titles of a number of works from his final decade.

    “Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes to death’s other Kingdom
    Remember us – if at all – not as lost 15
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.”
    The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot (1925)

    Composed of three similar ovoid forms as in the Elegies, the present work substitutes a deep amber pigment for the central black forms. Asymmetrically framed by bands of a brighter, golden orange in the upper right and lower left margins, the three figures are almost connected to one another. In this way, Hollow Men Series “retains an echo of the Elegy format in its sweep of ovals. The skeletal forms of the painting are drawn in graphite and charcoal on a rich luminous ground of ochre.”i Further adding to the “hollow” feeling of the figures is their washy amber hue – allowing the viewer to practically see through them onto the lighter ground of the canvas. 

     

    A detail of the present work.

    One of the last great works to be created before Motherwell’s passing in 1991, Hollow Men Series represents, as noted by art historian David Anfam, “Motherwell’s foremost signature idiom, which was as original and archetypal in its own right as Mark Rothko’s tiered rectangles, Barnett Newman’s vertical “zips,” Franz Kline’s monochromatic dramas, or Pollock’s poured skeins of pigment.”ii These signature figures recall a Surrealist tendency that is at the heart of the artist’s practice, creating a dialogue between artistic styles that merge to embody a common feeling – grief. 

     

    [Left] Mark Rothko, No. 17, 1958, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.136.99, Artwork: © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 
    [Right] Barnett Newman, Eighth Station, 1964, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, 1986.65.8, Artwork: © 2024 Barnett Newman Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 

     

    i Tim Clifford, Robert Motherwell: 100 Years, Skira, 2015, p. 295.

    ii David Anfam, Robert Motherwell: Elegy to the Spanish Republic, exh. cat., Dominique Lévy, New York, 2015, p.  15.

    • Condition Report

    • Description

      View our Conditions of Sale.

    • Provenance

      Dedalus Foundation (acquired in 1991)
      Miles McEnery Gallery, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      New York, Dominique Lévy, Robert Motherwell: Elegy to the Spanish Republic, November 4, 2015–January 9, 2016, pp. 16, 116 (illustrated, p. 16)

    • Literature

      Jack Flam, Katy Rogers, and Tim Clifford, eds., Robert Motherwell: Paintings and Collages, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941–1991, Volume Two, Paintings on Canvas and Panel, New Haven, 2012, no. P1167, p. 557 (illustrated)
      Daniel Creahan, "New York - Robert Motherwell: "Elegy to the Spanish Republic" At Dominique Lévy Through January 9th, 2015," Art Observed, January 7, 2016, online (illustrated)

    • 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.

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Property from a Distinguished European Collection

134

Hollow Men Series

incised with the artist's initials “RM” upper left; signed, titled and dated “R. Motherwell “Hollow Men Series” 1989” on the reverse
acrylic and charcoal on canvas
60 x 96 in. (152.4 x 243.8 cm)
Executed in 1989.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$600,000 - 800,000 

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Contact Specialist

Annie Dolan
NY Head of Auctions and Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session

New York Auction 15 May 2024