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

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  • Distinguished by the synthesis of color and gesture, the Zen paintings by Robert Motherwell, like Zen IV, 1972, symbolize the preoccupation with Japanese philosophy that informs a small, discrete series within Motherwell’s signature Opens. First exploring the notion of Zen in the mid-1940s, Motherwell did not relate these ideas to his works until the 1960s with his Lyric Suite and Open series. Returning to the concept in the 1970s and 1980s, Motherwell created the Zen series, a discrete group of 6 paintings created during 1972 to which the present work belongs. Part of the Open series, these works incorporate a painterly style which is inspired directly by the tenets of Japanese painting, mirroring ink-on-paper paintings from the 17th century while infusing them with an Abstract Expressionist, gestural twist.

     

    Interested in the “gesture of the metaphysical void” in Eastern philosophy, Motherwell’s works reflect influence from philosophical movements, particularly Japanese Zen, of which the present work takes its name.i The careful yet swift brushstrokes of the central forms are rendered like Japanese characters on a page, focusing on the ways in which “…line and color work in opposition to each other - the intellect responding to the line and the emotions to color.”ii Using these gestural brushstrokes to represent a pseudo-landscape, Motherwell explores the notions of light and dark within Zen IV. Manipulating the flatness of the canvas with these contrasting dark forms, Motherwell depicts what looks like a void, desolate landscape, an idea pioneered by his Surrealist predecessors. Exploring the juxtapositions of cool and warm, or light and dark, Motherwell creates an otherworldly effect in which gesture and paint interact to become one cohesive form.

     

    Yves Tanguy, The Look of Amber, 1929, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Chester Dale Fund, 1984.75.1, Artwork: © The Estate of Yves Tanguy / Artists Rights Society, NY / ADAGP, Paris

    Created between 1968 and 1974, the Open series culminates Motherwell’s most prolific body of work. Composed of canvases of different sizes, the series, as noted by the artist, “began as a door [but was] ultimately reversed into a window.”iii Motherwell’s fascination with the window as a symbol serves as the foundation for the series, intrigued by the possibilities of looking out from within that could be created through paint. Utilizing this notion in Zen IV, Motherwell depicts the window or door in three lines at the center of the composition, beckoning one into the space, despite its surface being entirely flat. Indeed, Motherwell leaves his work open - to the past, the future, and one another.

     

    Robert S. Mattison, “Robert Motherwell’s Opens in Context” 2009, p. 15

    ii Ibid. p. 14

    iii Robert Motherwell, “Statement of the Open Series” [1969], in Dosh Ashton, ed., The Writings of Robert Motherwell, Berkeley, 2007, p. 244. 

    • Condition Report

    • Description

      View our Conditions of Sale.

    • Provenance

      Private Collection (acquired in 1972)
      Private Collection (acquired from the above)
      Thence by descent to the present owner

    • 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. P700, p. 354 (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 Private Midwestern Collection

135

Zen IV

incised with the artist's initials and date "RM 72" lower right
acrylic and charcoal on canvas
32 x 32 in. (81.3 x 81.3 cm)
Executed in 1972.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000 

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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