Robert Motherwell - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, October 17, 2017 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Obelisk Gallery, Boston

  • Exhibited

    Robert Motherwell: Works on Paper (circulated by The Museum of Modern Art, New York to thirteen venues), September 20, 1965 through April 23 1967.

  • Literature

    This work will be included in the forthcoming Robert Motherwell Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings being prepared by the Dedalus Foundation.

  • Catalogue Essay

    The Lyric Suite is a series of more than five hundred improvisational drawings in colored inks on rice paper, all completed in six weeks during April and May. The title is taken from the string quartet by Alban Berg to which Motherwell listened while he worked on the series.

  • 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 New England Collection

24

Lyric Suite Brown #4

1965
Drawing in ink, on rice paper.
9 x 11 in. (22.9 x 27.9 cm)
Signed with initials in pencil, framed.

Estimate
$12,000 - 18,000 

Sold for $12,500

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Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 17 October 2017